API

The BrowserSync API is under development, so features are minimal at the moment.

You can however, already use it within your projects & with task runners such as Gulp using the following API.

##Usage

First, install browser-sync as a local development dependency.

npm install browser-sync --save-dev

Now use it within your project.

var browserSync = require('browser-sync');

##API ###browserSync.init( filePatterns, options );

####filePatterns

Type: String | Array

Default: null

Provide file watching patterns here

// single file pattern
browserSync.init('**/*.css');

// Multiple patterns as array
browserSync.init(['**/*.css', '*.html']);

####options

Type: Object

Default: null

There's a full list of available options here

####Events (requires version 0.5.7 or above) The init method returns an event emitter which you can use in various ways in your own projects, such as retrieving the HTML snippet, grabbing the URL BrowserSync is using, accessing options etc etc.

Example 1 - Retrieve the HTML snippet

You may want to use the HTML snippet in your own app (for example, if you have your own server setup with custom middleware).

var browserSync = require("browser-sync");
var files = "css/*.css";
var bs = browserSync.init(files, {});

bs.on("init", function (api) {
    console.log(api.snippet);
});

Example 2 - Retrieving the server/proxy url

You have full access to the internal options Object via the init event. So to grab the URL used in the Server or Proxy, you could do this

var browserSync = require("browser-sync");
var bs = browserSync.init(null, {});

bs.on("init", function (api) {
    console.log(api.options.url);
});

Example 3 - Listening to file-change events

You might want to be notified when BrowserSync has detected a file-change, you can do that by listening to the file:changed event.

var browserSync = require("browser-sync");
var files = "css/*.css";
var options = {
    server: {
        baseDir: "./"
    }
};
var bs = browserSync.init(files, options);

bs.on("file:changed", function (file) {
    console.log(file.path);
});

Example 4 - Emitting your own file-change events

If you have your own file-watching technique already in place, you can inform BrowserSync about changes by emitting the file:changed event. As an example, the following will inject core.css every 5 seconds.

var browserSync = require("browser-sync");
var bs = browserSync.init(null, {});

// Inject every 5 seconds
setInterval(function () {
    bs.emit("file:changed", {path: "Users/sites/project/css/style.css"});
}, 5000);