Harp.js is an awesome static web server with built-in preprocessing. It supports Jade, Markdown, EJS, CoffeeScript, Sass, LESS and Stylus as HTML, CSS & JavaScript, with no required configuration!

Harp doesn’t require any configuration to get started. Simply ensure you have Node.js installed and then run the following commands:

sudo npm install -g harp
harp init myproject
harp server myproject


Harp supports some very cool features that most developers will be familiar with, for example Yield, Partials, Globals, etc. You can also easily add a simple blog and basic authentication.

Before you start coding, I would check out their great documentation, starting with “The Rules”.

Once you’ve got your application running, you can deploy to Heroku in a couple of simple steps:

There are two files you’ll need to add to the root of your Harp application (not inside the public directory). The first is “package.json”, which should look like this (note the “harp” dependency):

{
	"name": "My-Harp-App",
	"version": "1.0.0",
	"description": "A Harp App on Heroku",
	"dependencies": {
	"harp": "*"
	}
}


Next, create a “Procfile”, containing the following line:

web: harp server --port $PORT


Thats it! You can now push to Heroku and your application will be live!

To save you time, feel free to use my “Harp Scaffolding” found on GitHub.

development programming harp node npm heroku