As the title says I'm trying to automatically compile the public static coffeescript files on page load, rather than having to compile them myself and use the .js files, how might I achieve this, I'm trying to maintain a full CoffeeScript stack, this is the only thing I'm having trouble figuring out.
tl;dr: Read the title of the post.
There are a number of ways to accomplish what you're trying to do. Two of the easiest that I know of:
Use the connect-assets module. The idea behind this is that you have an /assets folder in the root, and you instantiate it with express.static, as you normally would with your /public folder. In there, you have two more folders: /js and /css. Your CoffeeScript goes in your /js folder. Then, from within your view template, just call js('yourfile'). It's a wonderfully simple module, but isn't the most advocated asset pipeline.
Use asset-rack. While not as simple to grasp as connect-assets, it's very flexible and is easy to extend. It would be the closest comparator to Rails' asset pipeline and is used by most of the popular JS frameworks (like Sails.js).
However, I would really advise that you refrain from on-the-fly compilation of assets, as it can really drain server performance.
It would be way better to compile on file save using a build system - CoffeeScript ships with Cake, so you can define a watch/compile/build/concatenate step right in your Cakefile and all it would take for you to compile on file save is to type $ cake watch in to the terminal before you change any code.
Alternatively you could write code, then $ cake build. Whichever you prefer. I might also add that cake-flour takes all of the pain out of writing Cake tasks.
coffee --watch --compile .
watches for files changes in . and compiles them as they change. Since you are using expressjs I think you would also like to restart the server as soon as a recompile happens:
coffee --compile --watch . &; nodemon server.js
which uses https://github.com/remy/nodemon
If you only want to have access to compiled CoffeeScript files over HTTP, you could also give connect-coffee-script middleware a try. It has worked quite well for me.
It has the advantage over using coffee --watch --compile that you don't need to have a separate program running.
