Refresh Gatsby Content Without Restarting Development Server

I can't count how many hours I've wasted staring at my terminal waiting for the Gatsby development server to restart after editing content. Luckily, Gatsby can expose an endpoint to refresh content without restarting the whole server.

Prerequisite

• Postman HTTP client.

Enabling Refresh Endpoint

Add ENABLE_GATSBY_REFRESH_ENDPOINT=true to your development environment variables to enable the refresh endpoint. The endpoint exposes as http://localhost:8000/__refresh.

{"title": ".env.development"}
ENABLE_GATSBY_REFRESH_ENDPOINT=true

Triggering Refresh Endpoint

Using postman, send an HTTP POST request to the http://localhost:8000/__refresh endpoint.

GIF

Much faster than a complete server restart.

GIF

Using the Terminal

The refresh endpoint can also be triggered using the terminal on Unix-based operating systems.

curl -X POST http://localhost:8000/__refresh

Conclusion

The refresh feature is enabled by adding the ENABLE_GATSBY_REFRESH_ENDPOINT=true development environment variable. The endpoint is exposed as http://localhost:8000/__refresh and triggered by POST requests.

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