Gulp: Trouble setting browserSync and Watch - node.js

Question

I'm learning Gulp and NPM and decided to test myself by using Browser-Sync with a PHP project I'm working on (using XAMPP). I know Browser-Sync doesnt work with PHP files, but I wanted to use it with my .css files (and later on perhaps add Sass).
I installed npm, Gulp, Gulp-watch and Browser Sync to my project's root directory and all seemed fine.
I then created a gulp.js file with the following:
var gulp = require('gulp'),
watch = require('gulp-watch'),
browserSync = require('browser-sync').create();
gulp.task('watch', function() {
browserSync.init({
server: {
baseDir: "./"
}
});
watch('css/*.css', function() {
browserSync.reload();
});
});
However, when I gulp watch a new browser window does open but just shows the Cannot GET / error.
Also, the URL shows http://localhost:3002/ rather than http://localhost:myproejct
I read this may have something to do with my baseDir so tried:
baseDir: ""
baseDir: "./"
baseDir: "../myproject"
Would anyone know what I've done wrong?

Answer 1

You are doing way more than is necessary to do what you want. You can just use browsersync as a proxy layer over the top of your hosted site.
See the following example from the docs
# Proxy a PHP app + serve static files & watch them
$ browser-sync start --proxy 'mylocal.dev' --serveStatic 'public' --files 'public'
I think this is what you will need, run it from the physical root of your site and replace mylocal.dev with your php server address
npm install browser-sync -g
browser-sync start --proxy 'mylocal.dev' --serveStatic 'css' --files 'css/*.css'

Answer 2

Your code works fine for me. Assuming your target HTML file works if opened in the browser manually: One common cause of the Cannot Get/ error is using an index file other than Browsersync's default expectation, index.html. Could that be the problem you're having? If you need a custom index file, you can set the index option:
browserSync.init({
server: {
baseDir: 'mybasedirectorypath',
index: 'notindex.html'
}
});
Fwiw, you can also do this more efficiently, and save yourself the weight of installing gulp-watch (this example adapted and simplified from this Browsersync docs example):
var gulp = require('gulp'),
browserSync = require('browser-sync').create();
gulp.task('watch', function() {
browserSync.init({
server: {
baseDir: './'
}
});
gulp.watch('css/*.css').on('change',browserSync.reload)
});
As for using a custom url, check out https://github.com/BrowserSync/browser-sync/issues/646 which has some solutions.