Using Browsersync via a Gulp Task with DDEV-local

Question

I am using DDEV as my local hosting environment, and many of my projects implement front end automation via Gulp. Browsersync is a major component to our front end set-up, and requires ports to be exposed by the DDEV container to the host machine. The problem at hand is two fold, what is the best way to expose a port to the host machine from the container, and what is the best set-up for a Browser-Sync Gulp task in a DDEV environment?

Answer 1

Exposing the Necessary Ports

Part one of this situation requires using a Docker Compose file to expose your container's port to the hose machine. Based on this Answer you need to create a docker-compose.browsersync.yaml file in your .ddev directory.

An example of that file for Browser-Sync would be as follows:

# Override the web container's standard HTTP_EXPOSE and HTTPS_EXPOSE
# This is to expose the browsersync port.
version: '3.6'
services:
  web:
    # ports are a list of exposed *container* ports
    expose:
      - '3000'
    environment:
      - HTTP_EXPOSE=${DDEV_ROUTER_HTTP_PORT}:80,${DDEV_MAILHOG_PORT}:8025,3001:3000
      - HTTPS_EXPOSE=${DDEV_ROUTER_HTTPS_PORT}:80,${DDEV_MAILHOG_HTTPS_PORT}:8025,3000:3000

We expose Port 3000 here because it is the default for Browser-Sync, but could be updated to reflect the needs of your projects.

Note: After adding this file to your .ddev directory you should restart your ddev project.

For more information on defining new services with docker compose, read the DDEV docs.

Setting-Up Browser-Sync in Gulp

This assumes you have a working gulpfile.js ready to do with your other required packages included already. If you're not fully familiar with Browser-Sync and Gulp, please refer to their docs for full details.

const browserSync = require('browser-sync').create();

/*
* Set 'url' (the host and proxy hostnames) to match the canonical url of your ddev project.
* Do not include the http/s protocol in the url. The ddev-router will route the
* host machine's request to the appropriate protocol.
* 
* ex: yoursite.ddev.site
*/
const url = 'yoursite.ddev.site';

/*
* This function only includes the most basic browser-sync settings needed
* to get a watch server running. Please refer to the browser-sync docs for other
* available options.
*/
const startServer = function (done) {
    // Initialize BrowserSync
    browserSync.init({
        proxy: url,
        host: url,
        port: 3000,
    });
    done();
};

exports.startServer = startServer;

You can test this using gulp startServer after initial set-up. Gulp will output a http as the External URL for testing. However thanks to the ddev-router it can be accessed via http or https.

Answer 2

Exposing Port 3000 for HTTP & HTTPS for BrowserSync

piggy-backing on the answer from @TXChetG and the answer from @Mario Hernandez

create a file called "docker-compose.browsersync.yaml" inside your hidden /.ddev/ config folder with code below, tabbed properly (which is very important), then run the command "ddev restart"

# Override the web container standard HTTP_EXPOSE and HTTPS_EXPOSE
# This is to expose the browsersync port.
version: '3.6'
services:
  web:
    # ports are a list of exposed *container* ports
    expose:
      - '3000'
    environment:
      - HTTP_EXPOSE=${DDEV_ROUTER_HTTP_PORT}:80
      - HTTPS_EXPOSE=${DDEV_ROUTER_HTTPS_PORT}:80

Answer 3

If you are a mac user and browsersync still doesn't work with the above solution, you might need to update your /etc/hosts file as I had to.

You can check more details in this answer.

Answer 4

I was unable to run browsersync from within the container. I updated my local system and ran browsersync locally

I used Stephen's solution elsewhere on this page (https://stackoverflow.com/a/70190271/18779 for quick reference).

I am running a Mac so I also did the following:

• Upgrade homebrew
• Use brew to install nvm
• Use nvm to install node 12 (I had to try a few versions to eliminate errors. 12 worked for me.
• Use npm to rebuild node-sass. I got sass errors before I did this.
• run browsersync. I am using Drupal and Radix subtheme so, for me, that was cd [subtheme dir] and npm run watch

Answer 5

The above tips and from other posts like:

Using Docker Compose to expose DDEV web container ports to host machine

Chrome can't open localhost:3000 with Gulp / BrowserSync

may be fine for a website on the HTTP protocol but not for one on HTTPS.

Specifically, I am testing a CMS installation in DDEV, with secure URLs in the Frontend/Backend. After running the ddev start command, it is displayed that I access it in the browser using https://myproject.ddev.site or https://127.0.0.1:62751 (the socket changes with each run of DDEV).

I didn't install drud/ddev-browsersync package because it doesn't proxy to HTTPS, in my case it didn't help me at all.

In a directory I created the gulpfile.js file to perform complex tasks on scss, js, css, html files. In order not to manually reload the page in the browser, I obviously need BrowserSync. The only configuration that worked is the following:

const browserSync = require('browser-sync').create();

function startServer () {

    browserSync.init({
      proxy: 'https://127.0.0.1:62751',
    });
};

exports.startServer = startServer;

When I run the gulp startServer command, first https://localhost:3002 is displayed in the address bar, then after a while it redirects to https://myproject.ddev.site. From this moment on, I make any changes to the files.

The only issue I have is that after each run of the ddev start command I have to manually change the port in the line https://127.0.0.1:XXXXX. If DDEV provides this value I could use it and then the issue is solved.