How to Deploy a "create-react-app" based app on jetty/tomcat - node.js

I am trying to deploy a react based app in jetty. As part of that, I thought of trying to do the same in jetty server.
I followed a link:
https://www.megadix.it/blog/create-react-app-servlet/
The above link explains details about it and at the end there is a github project for making a war. the link to that is below:
https://github.com/megadix/create-react-app-servlet
Now, I am able to deploy the war created using the above github project in tomcat 9. I am unable to understand how the dependency resolution of node_modules is happening. Also I am unable to deploy the same war in jetty(putting the war in webapps folder and starting jetty)
Thanks

Single page applications needs to be compiled into one (in same cases more) .js file. In your case, create-react-app or similar tools are responsible for fulfilling this requirement.
In the pom.xml execution list, you can see npm install, npm build commands. They are pretty much similar as mvn clean install and mvn buuild.
Dependencies are resolved from package.json dependencies field and installed under node_modules. Once dependencies are there, npm build (or create-react-app-servlet build), compiles all the source code + dependencies into a js file. This probably has a name like main.XXXXXX.js.
In the end, you have a dist folder consisting of .html, .js and other resources.
It'd be better if you share more details of what's happening with jetty deployment

Related

Best practice for nodejs deployment - Directly moving node_modules to server or run npm install command

What is the best practice for deploying a nodejs application?
1) Directly moving the node_modules folders from the development server to production server, so that our same local environment can be created in the production also. Whatever changes made to any of the node modules remotely will not affect our code.
2) Run npm install command in the production server with the help of package.json. Here the problem is, any changes in the node modules will affect our code. I have faced some issues with the loopback module (issue link).
Can anyone help me?
Running npm install in production server cannot be done in certain scenario (lack of compiling tools, restricted internet access, etc...) and also if you have to deploy the same project on multiple machines, can be a waste of cpu, memory and bandwidth.
You should run npm install --production on a machine with the same libraries and node version of the production server, compress node_modules and deploy on production server. You should also keep the package-lock.json file to pinpoint versions.
This approach allows you also to build/test your code using development packages and then pruning the node_modules before the actual deploy.
Moving node_modules folder is overkilled.
Running npm install might break the version dependencies.
The best approach is npm ci. It uses the package_lock file and installs the required dependencies without modify the versions.
npm ci meant for continuous integration projects. LINK
I am an ASP.NET Core developer but I recently started working with Node.js apps. For me this was one of the challenges you mentioned to move the node_modules folder to production. Instead of moving the whole folder to production or only running the npm install command on production server, I figured out and tried a way of bundling my Node.js app using Webpack into a single/multiple bundles, and I just got rid of the mess of managing node_modules folder. It only picks up the required node_modules packages that are being used/referred in my app and bundles up in a single file along with my app code and I deploy that single file to production without moving the entire node_modules folder.
I found this approach useful in my case but please suggest me if this is not the correct way regarding the performance of the app or if any cons of this approach.
Definitely npm install. But you shouldn't do this by your own hand when it comes to deploying your app.
Use the tool for this like PM2.
As for your concern about changes in packages, the short answer is package-lock.json.
My guess is that by asking this question you don't really understand the point of the package.json file.
The package.json file is explicitly intended for this purpose (that, and uploading to the npm registry), the transfer of a node package without having to transfer the sizeable number of dependencies along with it.
I would go as far as to say that one should never manually move the node_modules directory at all.
Definitely use the npm install command on your production server, this is the proper way of doing it. To avoid any changes to the node_modules directory as compared to your local environment, use the package lock file. That should help with minimising changes to the source code in node_modules.
I mean no bad intent by saying this

Netlify: How do you deploy sites that are nested in a folder?

I have a repo that has the backend and frontend (create-react-app) in two separate folders. For the build command, I have something like cd frontend && npm run build and for the publish directory, I have something like frontend/build, but this is not working.
disclaimer: I work for Netlify.
If you were to clone a new copy (no node modules installed in the project, for instance) of your project on a fresh laptop with nothing else except node and npm installed there, how would you build it? Imagine netlify's build process like that. So you're missing at least an "npm install" step in there :)
Anything else missing, like globally installed npm packages? Need to specify them in package.json so that Netlify's build network knows to grab them for you. Ruby gems? Better have a Gemfile in your repo!
Netlify tries to npm install (and bundle install) automatically for you, assuming there is a package.json either in the root of your repository (I'm guessing yours is in frontend/ ?) OR if you set the "base" parameter so that we start our build in the base directory. This is probably a good pattern for you, to set "base" to frontend, and then set your publish directory to build.
You can specify that base parameter in netlify.toml something like this:
[build]
base = "frontend"
Note that netlify.toml must reside in the root of your repository.
For more details on how Netlify builds, check out the following articles:
Overview of how our build network works. This article also shows how you can download our build image to test locally.
Settings that affect our build environment. Useful for telling us about what node version to use, for instance.
Some frequently experienced problems
If after some reading and experimenting, you still can't figure things out, ping the helpdesk.
The top answer is correct ^. For anyone looking to simply change the base directory (lets say there is only one npm install/start) you need to change the BASE DIRECTORY, which you will find in the build settings. Simply go to: site-settings -> build & deploy - and you will see it where I pointed in the picture attacted. Hopefully that helps someone in need of this. see here

Deploy angular2 application

I developed an application in angular2 and now I need to deploy it.
Currently I have a wwww root folder containing:
html files
js files (generated from typescript)
css files (generated from scss)
/node_modules/ folders
/bower_componenets/ folder
The last two folders (node_modules & bower_components) are very heavy (300 mb and thousands of files) and it is very frustrating copy them using FTP.
Is there a way to keep only the needed files?
Thanks a lot
You can use gulp for creating bundle from the libraries into single file ex. vendor.js. Also deploying via ftp is very primitive. You should put your app on GitHub or Bitbucket and then log in to the server and pull your repository there and because you don't put the libraries folders into your git repository you will install the libraries on the server. If you want to go more advance you can use tool like Jenkins combined with gulp task for building your application. Jenkins will build your application automatically and deploy to your server on every push on your git repository
The following question could help you if you want to use Gulp:
How do I actually deploy an Angular 2 + Typescript + systemjs app?
Note that some answers are for beta versions and packaging changed for RC versions.
Angular-cli could also help you to build your application within the following command:
ng build -prod
Moreover using tree shaking could be interesting to minimize the weight of JavaScript files. See this article for more details:
http://blog.mgechev.com/2016/06/26/tree-shaking-angular2-production-build-rollup-javascript/

Best way to set up a node.js web project in a closed environment

We build a web application and our project uses various npm packages for development, testing and run-time.
The project is built as part of a large project in TFS. TFS runs ant to build the project. Our build.xml first runs npm install, then transpiles and minifies the TypeScript and Sass files (using Grunt tasks) and then builds the final war fie.
This all works OK, but our TFS is not allowed to access the Internet during the build, only our local network. Therefore, we have all the npm libraries we use copied to a file server in our network, and our package.json dependencies point to paths on that file server.
Does this seems like a reasonable solution?
The problem we have is that the npm install takes about 10 minutes to get all the >50 packages we use (which includes karma, grunt, sass, tslint, etc. – total is 170MB).
We are now looking for way to reduce the TFS build time. One option is to but the node_modules in our source control and skip the npm install step, but is seems wrong to put third-party code in our source control.
I’d love to hear other ideas to handle this and have shorter build time.
Note that on developers machine the project builds in no time, as all packages are already installed, but TFS builds start by getting a clean environment from source control, so nothing is installed.
Tough problem. You could have TFS check if your package.json checksum has changed in order to determine if a "clean" is necessary. You'd still have a 10 minute build whenever package.json is updated, but package.json changes are usually infrequent.
The lines become blurred when you host your own npm libraries since this is essentially taking a snapshot of only the dependencies you need. Therefore, if you added a dependency, colors, you'd have to update your npm repo. That could be viewed as updating the node_modules folder on your npm repo. It's a static list of available dependencies which essentially defeats the purpose of a package.json (unless of course other internal apps use the internal npm repo).
BUT, I digress, I'd argue that the best option is to have a package.json checksum for TFS to know if it should bother rebuilding node_modules.

How to package & deploy Node.js + express web application?

I am new to Node.js programming and I have recently created a sample working web application using (express, backbone & other complimentary view technologies, with mongoDB). Now i am at a point where I want to deploy the same on a staging environment and I am not sure how to package this application and distribute the same. [I can take care of mongoDb and setting it up seperately]
I am from Java world and in there we create jars for reusable libs and war/ear packages for web applications which is deployed in a servlet container. Now in this case since node.js itself acts as a web container as well, how do i package my webapp?
Is there any standard format/guidelines of packaging node webapps built using express? (Is there a similar jar/war packaging systems for node apps?)
How do I deploy it once packaged? Would it become an exe, since it is also its own container?
PS: As of now I am thinking of just manually copying all the required source files into the staging environment and run npm commands to download all dependencies on that machine and then use 'forever' or some other mechanism to run my server.js. (Also, add some sort of monitoring, just in case app crashes and forever fails) I am not sure if that is the right way? I am sure there must be some standardized way of addressing this problem.
Deploying Node.js applications is very easy stuff. In maven, there is pom.xml. Related concept in Node.js is package.json. You can state your dependencies on package.json. You can also do environmental setup on package.json. For example, in dev environment you can say that
I want to run unit tests.
but in production;
I want to skip unit tests.
You have local repositories for maven under .m2 folder. In Node.js, there is node_modules folder under your Node.js project. You can see module folders with its name.
Let's come to the grunt part of this answer. Grunt is a task manager for your frontend assets, html, javascript, css. For example, before deployment you can minify html, css, javascript even images. You can also put grunt task run functions in package.json.
If you want to look at a sample application, you can find an example blog application here. Check folder structure and package.json for reference.
For deployment, I suggest you heroku deployment for startup applciations. You can find howto here. This is simple git based deployment.
On project running part, simply set your environment NODE_ENV=development and node app.js. Here app.js is in your project.
Here is relative concept for java and nodejs;
maven clean install => npm install
.m2 folder => node_modules(Under project folder)
mvn test => npm test(test section on package.json)
junit, powermock, ... => mocha, node-unit, ...
Spring MVC => Express.JS
pom.xml => package.json
import package => require('module_name')
There is no standardized way, but you're on the right track. If your package.json is up to date and well kept, you can just copy/zip/clone your app directory to the production system, excluding the node_modules.
On your production system, run
npm install to install your dependencies, npm test if you have tests and finally NODE_ENV=production node server.js
Some recent slides I considered to be quite helpful that also include the topic of wrappers like forever, can be found here.
Hope this might be helpful for somebody looking for the solution,Packaging of Node js apps can be done using "npm pack" command.It creates a zip file of your application which can be run in production/staging environment.
Is there any standard format/guidelines of packaging node webapps
built using express? (Is there a similar jar/war packaging systems for
node apps?)
Yes, the CommonJS Packages specification:
This specification describes the CommonJS package format for
distributing CommonJS programs and libraries. A CommonJS package is a
cohesive wrapping of a collection of modules, code and other assets
into a single form. It provides the basis for convenient delivery,
installation and management of CommonJS components.
For your next question:
2. How do I deploy it once packaged? Would it become an exe, since it is also its own container?
I second Hüseyin's suggestion to deploy on Heroku for production. For development and staging I use Node-Appliance with VirtualBox and Amazon EC2, respectively:
This program takes a Debian machine built by build-debian-cloud or
Debian-VirtualBox-Appliance and turns it into a Node.js "appliance",
capable of running a Node application deployed via git.
Your webapp will not become an exe.
few ways to approach this:
Push your code into Git repository, excluding everything that isn't your code (node_modules/**), then pull it in your staging environment, run npm install to restore all dependencies
create an NPM package out of it , install it via npm in your staging environment (this should also take care of all of the dependencies)
manual copy/ssh files to your staging environment (this can be automated with Grunt), than restore your dependencies via npm
I used zeit's pkg module. It can create cross platform deliverables for linux/win/macos. Actually used it in production and works fine without any issues.
It takes in all the js scripts and packages it into a single file.
The reason I used it is because it helps in securing your source code. That way in production at customers environment they will have access to application but not the source code.
Also one of the advantages is that at production environment, you do not actually need to have the customer install node.js as the node binaries also get packaged inside the build.
https://www.npmjs.com/package/pkg

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