I'm beginning to learn web technologies and programming and I'm setting up my own local webserver. I have HTTPD, PHP, Python, MySQL all up and running on Windows. Now I want to add Node.js to the mix. I installed the Windows 64 bit installer. Now how do I begin? I have a basic Hello World script in a test.js file. But when I access this file in the browser it only displays as plain text. It's not executed. How to execute a Node.js script on the server?
3 Answers
Starting a node script is pretty simple. Just use your command line or terminal and execute the following command.
node /path/to/your/file.js
Doing so you'll start your node script. If you're going to start a server it's pretty much the same. Just keep in mind to define a server in your node file and start it. A simple server using express could look like this (You can also use a fully node way, this is just a simple example using express. You may check google for how to set up a simple node http server).
var express = require('express');
var app = express();
var port = 4000;
app.listen(process.env.port || port);
As you can see the specified port is set to 4000. You can simply adjust this by changing the value itself or passing in a node environment variable. To pass in an environment variable just start your server like this.
node port=3000 /path/to/your/file.js
This will finally pass the value of port to process.env.port which obviously will start your server on the port 3000.
1 Comment
Grennard
Ok. I got it up and running! Will need to do some more research on deploying it to an online web-hosting though in due time :-)
you can use these packages to keep the file running so you won't have to login to server every time :-
forever and you can just write :-
forever start app.js
nodemon app.js
pm2 which is very useful , as it will auto restart your app when it crash or any error happens
pm2 start app.js
answered Feb 7, 2017 at 15:01
Ahmed farag mostafa
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2 Comments
Quentin
The question says that they script only does "Hello, world". Your answer is skipping the bit where you write the JavaScript to create an HTTP server.
Ahmed farag mostafa
check the comments blow his question , he asked about how he can keep the app running on server
Your run your file: node server.js
Then it starts.
There should be specified in code on which port you run your server. Then it is accessible for example at http://localhost:3000/
As Quentin noted, I was thinking about "creating web server". Of course, you can run javascript code with Node.js without server. Then skip the part abot localhost, just use node test.js in console.
node /path/to/your/file.js