I really fail to think of the right name for this question. So I'm going to explain the scenario and if someone comes with a good name, please Edit the post or comment it below so I can edit it.
As far as I understood one of the pluses in running NodeJS with a reverse proxy is that the actual app that does the work stays out of the world and the port that the app is running could be closed for the outside world. (Let's say the nodejs server is running on port 3000).
So the only way to access the app is through the proxy that will be running on a port that's open for the world.
My question is what if the app wants to make a request (POST for example) to API on another server (not running in the local network). Should that request go through the proxy again or it could be directly made by the app itself? Does the fact that the port the app is running is closed for external access make it impossible to communicate with the outside world at all?
I am not sure I understood your question, but yes, you can make requests to the outside world from your Node app.
Exposing :3000 is only used to access the app itself, but from the app you're free to make any requests.
Related
A React app and Nodejs server which is used to retrieve and manipulate the data are running on the same server. When accessing the app locally it workes fine, but when accessed externally the app is visible but without data. The reason behind this is that the port on which the application is running is open but the port on which the Nodejs server is running is not.
My question is this, what is the best way to solve this issue? The simplest solution would be to open up the other port, but I am assuming that is not the most secure solution.
Any suggestions would be appreciated.
Open to port for the outside world and implement a token-based request verification system.
You can implement CSRF token verification. It always checks that request comes from a trusted source only.
Do this using a reverse proxy server, like nginx, to listen to the open https port. The reverse proxy will handle the https encryption, rather than burdening your nodejs code with it. nginx is multithreaded and can do https efficiently.
The reverse proxy passes along requests to your http://localhost:3000 nodejs. In my experience, this arrangement works very well at large scale.
Explaining how to do this is too much for a stack overflow answer. But you'll find plenty of online advice.
I'm still new to Node, so what I'm asking may not work the way I'm wanting to, but, here is my dilemma.
I have a website which has an old data collector (which I did not write) collecting data. I wrote a Node app that mimics the old data collector so that it can be replaced. But now that it's ready for testing, how do I point the Node app towards the website and not localhost? The Node app is going to be hosted in a secure server.
When I would test in Postman I would test the functionality for, say, the 'id' endpoint by checking
localhost:3000/id
but now I want is when a user on the website goes to an address such as
www.myexample.com/id
The code in my Node app will run. And I may be wording this wrong, but basically if one of the endpoints is hit, I want Node to run the code for that endpoint.
The code for my endpoints is along these lines:
router.post('/id.json', function (req, res, next) {
//do the things
}
Is there a way to have Node work this way with an external website? I've checked, but haven't come across anything that would work for this particular issue. I'm using Express and I've tried changing my app.listen, to
app.listen('www.example.com')
but I'm getting errors from there, so I'm not sure if I'm not using proper syntax or if this simply isn't what app.listen was intended to do. Ultimately, what I'm wanting to do is have the Node app work the same way with the website as it would with localhost.
You can't take any site name by just "listening" to it with node app. When user in the Internet goes to www.myexample.com/id, the url is resolved into ip address and user's browser connects to a server (physical machine) that is running on that ip address. This server then accepts the connection and serves the website back to user. If you own www.myexample.com domain name and the server this domain name points to, you should go to the server, take down whatever is hosting your current website and run your node app there. Your node app doesn't even know which website address it's being hosted on, all it cares about is accepting incoming connections and returning data. Also mind the port - http and https work on ports 80 and 8080 respectively (which are omitted in the url) and your node app, based on your description, is running on 3000
I am using this app https://github.com/nice-table/bitmex-scaled-orders to connect to testnet.bitmex.com through the api to place orders. I am running the app on Windows in node.js. It looks like the app starts a websocket on port 1337 and a bitmex proxy on port 8000. The app uses a GUI through the browser that you connect to through localhost:3006.
I have a proxy server set in Windows settings. I am unable to access localhost:3006 without the bypass proxy checkbox checked which makes sense. However, when I check the box, it seems as though outgoing traffic to bitmex is also bypassing my proxy. I am able to know because when I put wrong proxy info, the app still connects. Shouldn't this checkbox only apply to local traffic? Is there any way I can make this app use my proxy?
This can be used for testing, make sure the testnet is selected in the app
key ID: 9I0Ez-z-a8wAgM-IB03OMLg0
key secret: OzanemIvHP368THbeGjT6by5bABmYWIXQvAXILX6oumQpipY
I am illiterate when it comes to this stuff please let me know if theres more info I can provide. I tried contacting the author on github but no answer.
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.
Please pardon my ignorance on node.js. I have started reading on node.js and have some perception which might be wrong. So needed it to clarify
When we use createServer() method, does it creates a virtual server. Not sure whether the term "virtual" is appropriate, but it's the best I can describe it :)
I am confused that how should I deploy my application having node.js + other custom js files as a part of it. If I deploy my application in the main server, does that mean I have two servers?
Thanks for bearing with me.
I will try to answer that:
Q1:
createServer basically creates a process which listens on the specified port for the requests. So yes you can call it as a virtual server which constantly listens for request at the port.
Q2:
Yes you can say that it has now 2 servers
For eg: you server had apache initially which listens to port 80 (you can access it as http://example.com/ it by default looks for port 80)
and then you also start the node service listening on some other port for eg: port 8456 (you can access it as http://example.com:8456/ which will look for port 8456)
So yes you can there are two servers.
EDIT
Q: So what would be the difference if the page is served by the physical server and the virtual server created by node.js?
Physical Server and Node Server are 2 different things and there is no way a single request is going to both the servers.
For eg:
I use apache server to host my website running on PHP. It serves all the html contents of my website (which involves connecting to mysql for data).
Some of the requests could be:
http://example.com/reports.php
http://example.com/search.php
At the other end I might be using nodejs server for totally another purpose. For eg: I might use it for an API, which returns JSON/XML in return. I can use this API myself for some dynamic contents by making AJAX calls with javascript or simple CURL commands from PHP. Or I might also make this API available to public.
Some of the requests could be:
http://example.com:8456/getList?apikey=¶m1=¶m2=
My choice for NodeJs Server used as an API would be for its ability to handle concurrent request and since its asynchronous for file operations it will be much faster than PHP.
In this case I have a website which is not only working on PHP but its the combination of 2 different technologies (PHP on Apache and Nodejs) and hence 2 servers are totally different running on same server but have there own execution space.
Third Question:
So what would be the difference if the page is served by the physical server and the virtual server created by node.js?
If I might add, it's a virtual server in the sense that apache is an virtual http server listening on whatever port. Of course apache had a lot more modules and plugins and configurations to it where as Node's is lighter (kind of like WEBrick for rails), non-blocking and agile for building on. Then again apache is more stable.. in other words, it's a decision of software, both sitting on the server listening to a particular port set by you.
That said there's deployment methods that allow you to place a node application in front of software such as nginx (another server-side software) or HAproxy (load handling with a lot of power), so really it's all up to how you choose to configure it.
Maybe I'm getting to far from your question, but I hope this helps!
Also, You should give the answer to the other guy, he came first ;)