The application is fully self-contained so it doesn't need NPM to run or 'build'. You just need a Web server that can host static content. As such you can also run the app locally with a local Web server pointed at the UserLoginClient folder.

Here are two options I recommend:

1. Standalone Web Server: LiveReloadServer
   LiveReloadServer is an small, quickly installable, local Web Server that easily lets you run a Web site from any folder. Server supports static Web content, self-contained Razor Pages, Https and Live Reload of changed content.

2. Build Tools: Vite and Npm
   These are the tools by the project to optionally pull down dependencies and run the Vite build and server tools that can also run the application locally with Live Reload. Requires Node and NPM to run.

Both servers have live reload that auto-refresh whenever a change is made to any resources. 1. is generic, 2. is development implementation specific to the app .

Standalone Operation: LiveReloadServer

LiveReloadServer is a .NET based local Web Server that you can install and easily run out of any folder. Using this server you can just run the client application out of the UserLoginClient folder.

Installation

If you don't have LiveReloadServer installed you can install it from one of these mechanisms:

• dotnet tool install LiveReloadServer -g (requires .NET SDK - cross platform)
• choco install LiveReloadServer (requires Chocolatey CLI)
• Windows Installer

Running the Application with LiveReloadServer

To run the application once live reload server is installed you can open a terminal and start:

Dotnet Tool

LiveReloadServer D:\clients\BillPlander\ReserveFundManager\UserLoginClient -openEditor 

Installed Versions (Chocolatey, Windows)

LiveReloadWebServer D:\clients\BillPlander\ReserveFundManager\UserLoginClient -openEditor 

Add the -useSsl switch to run with https, but you have to configure the .NET SDK dev certs (already configured if you use ASP.NET in Visual Studio otherwise use dotnet dev-certs https --trust)

Use NPM and Vite Server (recommended for dev)

You can also NPM and Dev which is the app specific setup for the application. In order to do this you will need to have Node and NPM installed.

From the Terminal:

cd D:\clients\BillPlander\ReserveFundManager\UserLoginClient

# One time to force installing dependencies
npm install       

npm run dev

Use .\run.cmd

The simplest thing I recommend is that you update your run.cmd file and choose which of these methods you want to use. LiveReloadServer is the simplest if you don't plan on updating any libraries. Npm Vite is best if you're doing active development and plan on updating dependencies etc.

run.cmd defaults to LiveReloadServer, but has commented commands for the other approaches. Simply uncomment the mode you want to use, then use .\run.cmd