I have a basic electron app (wrapping a Reactjs app) - everything works fine both in dev and when packaged.
Now I want to introduce a dependency, another basic nodejs express file server. I have written this file server and it works.
This file server is a nodejs module (so that it can be managed seperately). It is then required and spawn within the electron app as a seperate "child process".
Problem:
When I run "yarn start:dev", everything works perfectly but once I package this app(yarn pack:dev), everything works EXCEPT the file server(child process).
I believe this has something to do with the path and the fact that electron will bundle the entire app as "asar". I have tried different approach and exhausted of ideas.
I think the "asar" file path is not accessible or something. I have also disabled the asar in electron-builder.yml but still having same issue.
Please I will really appreciate any help. Thanks.
Related
I set up strapi locally and it works fine.
Now I wanted to deploy to plesk, but I couldn't figure out how.
The Problem is, plesk asks for an explicit (JS) file to start with, if you run a node.js application. This works well in another project. But there is no such file in strapi.
Any ideas?
Strapi can start without a server.js file.
If you need a server.js file to be able to run node server.js instead of npm run start then create a ./server.js file as follows:
const strapi = require('strapi');
strapi(/* {...} */).start();
I am starting a new project which is using Angular 4 for frontend designing and the application will need some rest api's for which I have decided to use node. I am using angular cli for creating angular app and I know how to create angular app and node server but I want to know how will I connect these two things such that when I do ng serve both the server and angular app gets compiled and run. What basic changes in the project structure or some file is needed to be done?
I'm currently building a full-stack Angular app with a Node/Express backend and was wondering the exact same thing. However, despite what that scotch.io tutorial tells you, creating both the Express server and the Angular app in the same directory is NOT the best way to go about it.
What you want to do is set up your Express server in one project and serve it in one terminal window, then serve your Angular app in a separate terminal window but have it point to your locally-running Express server instead of the default dev server that's included with the Angular CLI (the ng-serve command).
Here's a Stack Overflow answer and also a Medium article that answered all of my questions for how to set this up (fortunately, it's not too hard).
Here's what I did Shubham. I went into the Angular-Cli and changed "outDir": to "../public"in other words it will look like "outDir": "../public". The ../public folder is my Express static folder set in my app.js file with app.use(express.static(path.join(__dirname, 'public')));
Keeping in mind I have nodemon installed globally, and in my package.json file, "start": "node app" I simply run nodemon from this dir to start my server and both Angular and Express run on the same server.
I have seen some people say it's not good to run static filed on the Node/Express server, but for development I'm not sure it matters. Although I'm a novice when it comes to js frameworks etc. Here's the project files on my github acct: https://github.com/chriskavanagh/angularauth.
Edit: You must run ng-build (in your Angular dir) whenever you change code.
First, in Angular project do ng build, it will create dist folder (static folder).
Second step, paste the following code in backend servers entry point file.
app.use(express.static(path.join(__dirname, 'dist/')));
app.get('*', (req, res) =>{
res.sendFile(path.join(__dirname, 'dist/index.html'));
});
And after the above thing is done run backend server: node filename
Note: in give proper path where your index.html file is located in dist folder.
The node server and the Angular app are two different things.
In order to run the node server you should use the command:
node ServerName.js
In order to run the angular app you should use the command:
npm start OR ng serve
In your case, the connection between the two is made by http requests.
For example you could use 'express' in order to implement rest services in your node server and then send an http request to the server in the current route.
I am trying to assist in setting up AppDynamics with an Angular 2 app that is hosted in IIS. The app is already up and running. There is a part I am having trouble on, the instructions for that part say say:
1) From the root directory of your Node.js application, run this command:
npm install appdynamics#4.3.5
For every Node.js application you are instrumenting, insert the following call in the application source code at the first line of the main module (such as the server.js file), before any other require statements:
require("appdynamics").profile({
controllerHostName: '<controller host name>',
controllerPort: <controller port number>,
controllerSslEnabled: false, // Set to true if controllerPort is SSL
accountName: '<AppDynamics_account_name>',
accountAccessKey: '<AppDynamics_account_key>',
applicationName: 'your_app_name',
tierName: 'choose_a_tier_name',
nodeName: 'choose_a_node_name'
});
2) Restart you application
I did step 1 locally in the console, but I don't know what to do for step 2. If I add that script to the page I get "The Reference error: require is not defined".
I learned that that function is not meant to run on the browser. It's meant to be run server-side, but I do not see node js or any server.js files on our dev web server.
Does anyone have any suggestions on where to put that snippet. Will it even work with the current setup?
It turns out the code I was given was completely wrong for angular 2 implementation. The code they gave me is for running on the web server's side with node js. Since angular 2 is an SPA that runs on the browser, it would never work.
I did some research and found this example application that I added a few tweaks to: https://github.com/derrekyoung/appd-sampleapp-angular2
I have an electron app where I need not only to run the interface to the user but also start an express server that will serve files for people connected through the network.
I have everything working if I start both electron and the express server normally, but I'm pretty confident that I will need the server running in a different thread to avoid slugish interface and even problems with the server.
For that matter I tried to run my express server using the child_process.fork and it worked when I use npm start, but when I use electron-builder to create an .exe, the installed program doesn't start the express server.
I tried to run my server right away using:
require('child_process').fork('app/server/mainServer.js')
I tried several changes, prefixing the file with __dirname, process.resourcesPath and even hard coding the generated file path; changing the fork options to pass cwd: __dirname, detached: true and stdio: 'ignore'; and even tried using spawn with process.execPath, which will also work with npm start but won't when packaged (it keeps opening new instances of my app, seems obvious after you do hehe)
Note: If I don't fork and require the server script right away, using require('server/mainServer.js') it works on the packaged app, so the problem most like isn't the express itself.
Note 2: I have asar: false to solve other problems, so this is not the problem solver here.
I put up a small git project to show my problem:
https://github.com/victorivens05/electron-fork-error
Any help will be highly appreciated.
With the great help from Samuel Attard (https://github.com/MarshallOfSound) I was able to solve the problem (he solved for me actually)
As he said:
the default electron app will launch the first file path provided to it
so `electron path/to/thing` will work
in a packaged state, that launch logic is not present
it will always run the app you have packaged regardless of the CLI args passed to it
you need to handle the argument manually yourself
and launch that JS file if it's passed in as the 1st argument
The first argument to fork simply calls `process.execPath` with the first
argument being the path provided afaik
The issue is that when packaged Electron apps don't automatically run the
path provided to them
they run the app that is packaged within them
In other words. fork is actually spawn being executed with process.execPath and passing the fork's first argument as the second for spawn.
What happens in a packaged app is that the process.execPath isn't electron but the packaged app itself. So if you try to spawn, the app will be open over and over again.
So, what Samuel suggest was implemented like this:
if (process.argv[1] === '--start-server') {
require('./server/mainServer.js')
return
}
require('./local/mainLocal.js')
require('child_process').spawn(process.execPath, ['--start-server'])
That way, the first time the packaged app will be executed, the process.argv[1] will be empty, so the server won't start. It will then execute the electron part (mainLocal in my case) and start the app over, but this time passing the argv. Next time the app starts, it will start the server and stop the execution, so the app won't open again because spawn is never reached.
Huge thanks to Samuel.
I've been using 'yo express' command and choose MVC , jade , grunt ....
Everything is working fine and now I'm managing to deploy my app.
Now I only know two commands to start my app
grunt
node app.js
If I run "grunt" command on my production server , it will enable livereload server , which is good for development but not production.
I think maybe grunt can help me to do optimization but I couldn't find it. I saw webpack is a good choice but it's too difficult for me to use it.
Is there any way to do optimization ( like compress js css ) or other tasks for deploying on my 'yo express' generated app?
Thanks.
Normally there is no need to minify your server side js file because this only reduced the loading time for the browser which here isn't the case. To run nodejs in productin you could look at a a process manager like pm2. To build your client side files for production you might have to extend your grunt setup by yourself or use a second yo generator for your frontend part of the application.