Browser hot-reloading is a crucial development technique that automatically refreshes your web application when source files change, providing a seamless and efficient development experience for Python ASGI web frameworks like FastAPI.

arel is a lightweight library designed to implement development-only hot-reloading for non-Python files that are not dynamically read from disk on each request. This includes:

• HTML templates
• GraphQL schemas
• Cached rendered Markdown content
• Static assets

• Real-time file change detection
• WebSocket-based browser notifications
• Customizable reload hooks
• Minimal performance overhead

1. File Watching: arel monitors specified files for changes
2. WebSocket Notification: When a file is modified, it sends a signal to the browser
3. Automatic Reload: An injected client script triggers a page refresh
4. Custom Hooks: Developers can register additional server-side reload operations

• Python 3.8+
• FastAPI
• uvicorn

# Clone the repository
git clone https://github.com/ashleymavericks/browser-hot-reloading.git

# Install dependencies
pipenv install  # or pip install -r requirements.txt

# Start the FastAPI application with hot-reloading
DEBUG=true uvicorn main:app --reload

For an in-depth explanation of browser hot-reloading and the implementation details, check out the comprehensive blog post:

Supercharge Your FastAPI Development with Browser Hot Reloading Using Arel

Contributions are welcome! Please feel free to submit a Pull Request.

This project is licensed under the MIT License - see the LICENSE file for details.