sorry if this is a wrong question on this forum but I am simply just stuck and need some advice. I have a shared hosting service and a cloud based hosting server with node.js installed. I want to host my website as normal but I also want to add real time chat and location tracking using node.js I am confused with what I am reading in several places because node.js is itself a server but not designed to host websites? So I have to run 2 different servers? One for the website and one to run node.js? When I setup the cloud one with a node.js script running I can no longer access the webpages.
Whats the best way for me achieve this as I am just going round in circles. Also is there a way I can set up a server on my PC and run and test both of these together before hand so I see what is needed and get it working as it will stop me ordering servers I dont need.
Many thanks for any help or advice.
Node can serve webpages using a framework like Express, but can cause conflicts if run on the same port as another webserver program (Apache, etc). One solution could be to serve your webpages through your webserver on port 80 (or 443 for HTTPS) and run your node server on a different port in order to send information back and forth.
There are a number of ways you can achieve this but here is one popular approach.
You can use NGINX as your front facing web server and proxy the requests to your backend Node service.
In NGINX, for example, you will configure your upstream service as follows:
upstream lucyservice {
server 127.0.0.1:8000;
keepalive 64;
}
The 8000 you see above is just an example, you may be running your Node service on a different port.
Further in your config (in the server config section) you will proxy the requests to your service as follows:
location / {
proxy_pass http://lucyservice;
}
You're Node service can be running in a process manager like forever / pm2 etc. You can have multiple Node services running in a cluster depending on how many processors your machine has etc.
So to recap - your front facing web server will be handling all traffic on port 80 (HTTP) and or 443 (HTTPS) and this will proxy the requests to your Node service running on whatever port(s) you define. All of this can happen on one single server or multiple if you need / desire.
Related
What I'm trying to do is create an access website for my own services that run on my linux server at home.
The services I'm using are accessible through <my_domain>:<respective_port_num>.
For example there's a plex instance which is listening on port X and transmission-remote (a torrenting client) listening on port Y and another custom processing service on port Z
I've created a simple website using python flask which I can access remotely which redirects paths to ports (so <my_domain>/plex turns into <my_domain>:X), is there a way to display these services on the network paths I've assigned to them so I don't need to open ports for each service? I want to be able to channel an existing service on :X to <my_domain>/plex without having to modify it, I'm sure it's possible.
I have a bit of a hard time to understand your question.
You certainly can use e.g. nginx as a reverse proxy in front of your web application, listen to any port and then redirect it to the upstream application on any port - e.g. your Flask application.
Let's say, my domain is example.com.
I then can configure e.g. nginx to listen on port 80 (and 443 for SSL), and then proxy all requests to e.g. port 8000, where Flask is running locally.
Yes, this is called using nginx as a reverse proxy. It is well documented on the internet and even the official docs. Your nginx.conf would have something like:
location /my/flask/app/ {
# Assuming your flask app is at localhost:8000
proxy_pass http://localhost:8000;
}
From user's perspective, they will be connecting to your.nginx.server.com/my/flask/app/. But behind the scenes nginx will actually forward the request to your app, and serve its response back to the user.
You can deploy nginx as a Docker container, I recommend doing this as it will keep the local files and configs separate from your own work and make it easier for you to fiddle with it as you learn. Keep in mind that nginx is only HTTP though. You can't use it to proxy things like SSH or arbitrary protocols (not without a lot of hassle anyway). If the services generate their own URLs, you might also need to configure them to anticipate the nginx redirects.
BTW, usually flask is not served directly to the internet, but instead nginx talks to something like Gunicorn to handle various network related concerns: https://vsupalov.com/what-is-gunicorn/
I am working on a swift project for osx with Firebase. I have a node web server to communicate between the clients and the Firebase-server, but it's a localhost-server. Do I need a real domain name to make the server accessible to end-users on another device? (I don't want a web app, just the backend for myself)
you doesn't need a domain .. but you need a serve to deploy having ip address .. suggestion you can use cloud server
You have two ways:
make request on port that the nodejs uses, example http://101.01.01.01:8000
use nginx like proxy, in this setup make your requests on 80 port (it's default), example http://101.01.01.01.
If you wont make something like dev environment on local machine use first case (don't forgot open port for other devices), for production - second.
I have read that proxies can be created by Nginx server for nodejs application to listen on but I am doubtful as to what exactly this will serve additional purpose and advantages compared to http module provide by nodejs for listening purpose.
For one, you can serve multiple Node applications on one server, with host based virtual servers managed by nginx, so that requests to the same port but with different Host: HTTP header reach different Node applications.
Also nginx can be set up to serve static assets without hitting your Node app and do some caching if you need it.
Those are two things that you can achieve with adding nginx to the mix but you may not need that in your case. Also, you can run a reverse proxy with Node and without nginx if that's what you prefer.
I have a website under domain (say example.com) which is hosted on Amazon Web Services EC 2 instance which has Apache already installed and ready to run on port 80.Now I wish to transfer from Apache to node JS (where Node JS runs on another port, say 8001).How to change the HTTP port address of EC 2 say that when i go to that URL (example.com) it should run on node JS instead of Apache (While for temporary,node JS runs on example.com:8001).
How is it possible and Kindly help?
So you cannot direct a standard web address (e.g. www.example.com) to anything other than port 80. By default http is on port 80 and https is on port 443. You can override that default by explicitly giving the port but you cannot change that default.
So your options are:
Replace Apache with Node on port 80. This will involve shutting down Apache (and making sure it doesn't auto restart on reboot), and changing your node port to port 80. This also will probably require running your node service as root (as port 80 is usually protected) and this is not recommended (Apache starts as root to get the port but then usually immediately switches to non-root user).
Have Apache proxy forward requests to Node. This means Apache is still your main webserver and listens on port 80 but certain requests are sent on to Node.
This second option could be done using mod_proxy with config like this:
ProxyPass "/foo" "http://localhost:8001/"
ProxyPassReverse "/foo" "http://localhost:8001/"
It all depends on what you want to use your set up for and making best use of the software available to you.
Typical set up is a multi-layered approach involving one or more of these:
LoadBalancer (optional for high load sites or where resiliency is key)
Webserver
Appserver
Database
Yes you could use just Node for all of these layers. However, to me, it is more an application server than a webserver.
A webserver like Apache or Nginx is specifically designed to act like a web server, and by that I mean serving static pages and doing other top layer stuff. They have several features built up over their years to provide speed and security. Now nearly everything they can do, can be done in Node but not quite as easily and not by standard and often requires pulling in 3rd party modules.
A webserver then typically offloads dynamic work to other programs. This could be scripts (PHP or Perl), or separate app servers like Tomcat, Jboss or Node. These are typically very good at specific tasks (e.g. talking to database and generating dynamic pages) but less good at severing static pages quickly.
The beauty of node to me is for micro- services, where you can have lots of independent, but potentially interlinked, node services which are all lightweight and good at one task and the web server is still needed in front of them. This compares to a bulky multi-tasking J2EE server like Tomcat or Jboss that you would use in the past which tried to do every dynamic app under one process (though admittedly often under separate WAR files).
So, without knowing your full use case, I would suggest Apache and Node instead of Node replacing Apache.
I have a site for hosting my dev projects. Each project is a node.js file. The problem is I can only have 1 project online at the same time - except if I host them in a different ports. But suppose I want to publish 2 projects like that: my_site.com/foo, my_site.com/bar, where the first is managed by "foo.js" and the second by "bar.js". How can I do that?
You need a proxy in front. You assign each separate node process a different port. The proxy forwards traffic on port 80 to the appropriate backend node process.
This can be accomplished with node-http-proxy (https://github.com/nodejitsu/node-http-proxy), or any web server. Nginx and lighttpd make it ridiculously easy, Apache less so but still completely doable.
Setup a Nginx process to reverse proxy to your Node processes. The Nginx process will hold onto the port and send requests for my_site.com/foo to the node foo.js backend process and send requests for my_site.com/bar to the node bar.js backend process.
This way your Node processes stay completely independent and can easily be separated out to different servers later if one of them becomes popular.
If you are using express/connect, you can use something along the lines of
var bar = require("./bar"),
foo = require("./foo");
app.use(express.vhost("my_site.com/bar", bar));
app.use(express.vhost("my_site.com/foo", foo));
Is A Separate File.
NOTE: Not Tested