I'm very new to NodeJs/expressJs, i read tons of articles on internet and still don't understand it
is NodeJs a web server like IIS ? if so can i host an asp.net app in NodeJS ?
Is expressJs a framework like ASP.NET ?
I currently work on both IIS ASP.NET applications as well as NodeJS/ExpressJS systems and the below is what I have noted to be different:
IIS:
Windows server based
Can have strict setups such as MVC etc
Built in deployment that compiles the entire website
Setup can take quite some time to create all modals and get all
plugins working etc
Services can take some time setup and modal mapping can be tedious
NodeJS/ExpressJS:
Not Windows based. I run this typically on an Ubuntu server with
Nginx to push the domain to the public
Easy to setup and fast to get something basic online
Does not natively compile and runs files as they are
Uses npm package manager with easy to install packages
Does not have strict setups but you can technically create your own
MVC style system
Code can quickly become messy however with the correct approach you
can manage the amount of code easily.
NodeJS is not a web server. It is a backend server (Such as a REST API etc)
ExpressJS sits ontop of NodeJS to add functionality and is essentially a framework. Coupled with jade/pug you can write js inside the html.
Related
For an example, I have one angular ui project that fetches values and perform operations.
I have one backend API project in .Net Core and now I want to reuse angular ui project with node js.
Is it possible?
How to configure it and which are the main points to take care that angular project support both.
How can I deploy it?
Angular is a client side application that run's in clients browser, as long as the REST API or service you connect has Same API endpoints and same object models and authentication etc everything will work as intended.
REST is platform independent like the web services and also language independent. It doesn't matter if you use .Net Core or some nodejs framework.
Once the angular application is build ( ng build --prod) you get a bundled application files in dist folder you can host these files in any web sever just like you host normal html file.
The only change you have to make in the the Angular application will be to change the host URL (if there is any change) normally configured in environments folder
Take help of environment file and change the api as per your requirement.
As we all know you can use compilers as Cordova to convert web applications so you can upload your application to the app store.
This can easily be done when developing with HTML5 and Node.
But is it possible to convert a MEAN application (MongoDB, Express, Angular and Node)?
You can run nodejs server on mobile with jxcore, but I think you should run only client side part on cordova and api shall stay on server. Ideally, I think that api and client side must be separate projects.
No, you can't.
MEAN stack is full stack. You can make your frontend an app with cordova but you still need database and backend service.
But that's ok. Make your app mobile friendly and stick with your server to provide the data you need to make it work.
What you can do, it's to create hosted web app. This is existing web application, just wrapped to make it possible to submit to app store.
For this you can use Manfoldjs, for example Using Cordova Plugins in Hosted Web Apps or if you use Visual Studio, you can use Visual Studio Tools
for Apache Cordova.
So I'm new to Vuejs and doesn't know anything about npm, node, and other javascript apps.
I wanted to switch to VueJS so that I can take away from JQuery. Been using AdminLTE for my projects before.
I wanted to use vue-admin now since it seems to address all of my needs. However, I have specific work area situations that seems to hinder learning Vue and other JS apps, these are:
The workspace folder (development) where I'm creating applications is hosted in the production server (Windows Server).
I think NodeJS isn't installed in the server
Adobe Coldfusion is used. I don't have a local server, so the production server is used when developing.
Question:
Will the production server run the app built with vue-admin even if the production server doesn't have NodeJS installed? (I have NodeJS locally).
I need to use Coldfusion for the logic of the application, specifically I'm using CFWheels right now and vue-admin for Frontend and UX. Is it possible? The application I'm making is closely related to parts of an ERP system.
Any pointers on how I could do this?
Yes you can. Most likely you will need NodeJS locally to make your development life a bit easier.
You can simply include Vue in your project with a script tag or your can use a buildtool like Webpack to enable you to write ES6 and use a module system.
If you go with the latter it still exports as plain ES5 allowing you to use it on your server without any problem since all of this is code which runs on the clients machine, not on your server.
As you can see the requirements for this project have a big bold headline with: 'Development'.
https://github.com/vue-bulma/vue-admin#development
You don't need any of the requirements in production.
I have NodeJS server for my iPhone and Android apps and I want to build an admin panel as desktop application using Electron.
From my research, I found out that Electron depends on its own version of node and it can't run on other server instance.
My questions are:
1) is it advisable to implement the admin panel using Electron knowing that it depends on its own version of NodeJS?
2) is there away to integrate my current NodeJS server for mobile apps to my Electron? because using two different servers will be costly when it comes to hosting them
3) what are other alternatives that enable me to implement cross-platform desktop application using my current mobile apps server?
NOTE: The admin panel server functionality are completely different from mobile apps.
1) is it advisable to implement the admin panel using Electron knowing that it depends on its own version of NodeJS?
Yes, that is perfectly fine. You can access your current node server directly from your electron app, or create a new node server that electron will access.
2) is there away to integrate my current NodeJS server for mobile apps to my Electron? because using two different servers will be costly when it comes to hosting them
You can run multiple nodejs servers on one machine (just use different ports when starting the servers). This is one easy way to get around this issue, or you can just have a group of /admin endpoints that handle all admin related functionality. Think of electron has a front-end that can be distributed across various platforms and access any back-end you choose.
3) what are other alternatives that enable me to implement cross-platform desktop application using my current mobile apps server?
Electron / nwjs (node-webkit) are the only two that come to mind. Although there are probably others.
More Electron/nwjs details:
Just think of these as browsers that allow you to write nodejs. Therefore, within the browser you can access databases you ship with your app, or anything on the users file system. You can also make requests from your app to already created nodejs servers. Also, they allow you to easily package up your app for cross-platform distribution.
I am coming from Microsoft world so please bear with me on this. I was told I could install node.js and use that as a web server instead of IIS. This is a very small business application. In IIS I can create virtual directory and point to the location of the web page and everything works just fine. Based on very little I read, I have few questions;
Is it possible to run node js as a windows service or any other form so that it runs for ever? I did find the forever package that I think I can use.
In IIS, I can create virtual directory set the port and thats it, I have myself a website.
I do not see any examples where I can use a directory where I have a web page, written in java script and point it to run as a web site. All the examples have some thing like server.js and that runs and routes the call. what is the other way to host web sites and use node.js to simple run as a fast web server.
I was told I could install node.js and use that as a web server instead of IIS.
This is true, but as you already found out then you are in charge of providing for things that IIS was already doing for you (e.g. automatically restart on reboot, or on crashes, hosting multiple sites by creating virtual folders, et cetera.)
You can indeed get all of these things worked out in Node.js and there are several libraries that help on each of these areas. It's not too hard but you'll need to do a bit of researching.
You can also run Node.js behind IIS. Take a look at iisnode http://tomasz.janczuk.org/2011/08/hosting-nodejs-applications-in-iis-on.html
Is it possible to run node js as a windows service or any other form so
that it runs for ever?
The library Forever takes care of restarting the site when it crashes...but I don't know if you can run it as a Windows Service. I haven't tried that.
In IIS, I can create virtual directory set the port and thats it,
I have myself a website.
I assume you are talking about a site that serves static HTML files, right? If that's the case that's very easy to support in Node.js either writing your own web server or using Express.js to serve static files.
I do not see any examples where I can use a directory where I have a web page,
written in java script and point it to run as a web site. All the examples
have some thing like server.js and that runs and routes the call.
Here is an extremely simple example to serve plain HTML files in Node.js https://gist.github.com/2573391 Don't use this in production, though. It's just an example and it does not have any kind of error handling or security.
what is the other way to host web sites and use node.js to simple run
as a fast web server.
As others have said, you should look into Express.js http://expressjs.com/ It provides some of the infrastructure that you are very likely going to need when building traditional web sites.
You say you're running a "very small business application" behind IIS. Unless it's written for Node.js (in JavaScript), it won't work.
There are no examples pointing to a directory and running that as a website, because that's not how things are done in Node.js. You write a Node.js-application and pull in a webserver-library.
Put simply, In Node.js, you don't embed the appliation in the webserver; you embed the webserver in the application.
When I used node.js, I redirected HTTP requests by a proxy server, nginx. I don’t know if you can directly bind node.js as an HTTP server, but for what’s it worth, nginx is pretty nice!
First things first, allow me to share an introduction. IMHO you should take this decision ( of moving from IIS to nodeJS) by adding various parameters. I belong to the Java & PHP community yet I use NodeJS to achieve extremely specific implementation where NodeJS perform the fastest ( fast IO, AJAX-JSON responses & more ). As you are coming with a Microsoft background you should bare with less comfortable solutions.
Yes, its possible to run NodeJs as a windows service and Forever will do fine.
and yes you can create "Virtual Directories" but by creating symbolic links to each of your customer's web site.
I recommend to take a good look at bouncy & express, If you're willing to take this step then these packages is just what you need.
Cheers!