Netlify Kills the Staging Server with New Netlify Dev for Local Testing and Live Stream Preview Capabilities
For the first time, web developers can locally test serverless functions, API integrations and CDN Logic as they would behave in production, complete with the ability to live stream and share progress instantly
NEW YORK — JAMstack_conf NYC — April 9, 2019 — Netlify is bringing new local testing and live stream preview capabilities to more than 12 million sites deployed on its platform, helping teams bring web applications to market faster. Developers now have access to capabilities of the Netlify platform on their laptops, meaning they no longer have to wait for staging or production to test and get feedback on their websites and applications.
Now in public beta, Netlify Dev™ gives developers the productivity boost of being able to locally test site generation, API integrations, AWS Lambda Serverless functions, and complex CDN logic—all in a single development server, exactly as they will behave in production. And to improve collaboration, the new Netlify Live™ feature allows developers to live stream their development server to a cloud URL, so they can instantly share updates as the code and content changes.
“Netlify has a knack for simplifying things that are hard so I can focus on building my web application, and Netlify Dev is another example of that,” said Kent C. Dodds, software engineer and educator. “I'm excited about being able to simply develop, test, and debug my Netlify web applications with one simple command.”
To make the new workflow possible, Netlify compiled its entire edge redirect engine into WebAssembly, meaning developers can locally test all of the same rules before deploying to production. Developers can also write and validate AWS Lambda functions in the Netlify CLI using modern JavaScript and deploy them as full API endpoints.
“Netlify is obsessed with developer productivity for building modern sites on the JAMstack,” said Mathias Biilmann, CEO. “The new local test and share capabilities of Netlify Dev provide a single, simplified workflow that brings everything together—from the earliest code to production global deployment.”
Netlify Dev automatically detects common tools like Gatsby, Hugo, Jekyll, React Static, Eleventy and more, wrapping around them to provide a single development server and workflow. New and existing users can get started with Netlify Dev by installing or updating the Netlify CLI in order to create new sites, set up continuous deployment and push new deploys, right from the command line.
The new Netlify Dev features are tightly coupled with Netlify's famed git-based workflow for team collaboration. As developers work in git, Netlify brings an instant CI/CD pipeline so that every commit and pull request builds the site into a deploy preview, demoing exact functionality. Because of this, developers can build and collaborate in the full production environment, confident in how their apps will perform once published live.
For more information or to get started with Netlify Dev, visit www.netlify.com/products/dev.
About Netlify
Netlify is modernizing the web by providing developers with a global application delivery network that completely eliminates the need to worry about infrastructure and hosting. The creators of the term JAMstack, a modern web development architecture based on client-side JavaScript, reusable APIs, and prebuilt Markup; Netlify is forever changing the way we consume the web. For more information, visit https://www.netlify.com/ and follow us on Twitter @Netlify.
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