I have a nodejs application that generates images and then saves them on to a Web server to be loaded by browser clients.
I’m wondering what is the most effective way to save files directly from node JS on to the Linux server that is running in nginx.
I’m trying to avoid as much configuration/programming as possible, so trying to find the simplest possible way to get files from one machine to the other.
FTP seems too slow. SCP seems too cumbersome. Maybe I need to write some upload code on the engine X machine so I can post a Files onto it. Wondering if anyone has any better suggestions? Maybe SMB? Or maybe NFS?
For those who might come later.
My goal was to find a simple way to upload files onto a web server.
Easy to program, minimal configuration.
In the end I went with nginx and used its webdav module which made it very easy and met all my goals.
Related
I've been developing a Next.js website locally and now want to set it up on my Apache server (with cPanel). However, I'm very new to Next.js and Node apps and not too sure how to go about it.
Has anyone done this successfully? Can you list the required steps and what files should be on the server?
Also, can this be done on a subdomain?
Thank you!
To start with some clear terms just so we're on the same page, there are two or three very different things people mean when they say "server":
A Server Machine is a computer that is connected to the internet that you intend to use to serve something to people on the internet.
A Server Program is some software you run on your Server Machine. The job of the Server Program is to actually calculate the responses to various requests.
A Server as a Service is a webapp provided by a company that stores your code and then puts it onto Server Machines with the right Server Program as needed.
While we're here, let's also define:
A Programming Language is the language your website is written in. Some sites have no language (and are just raw HTML/CSS files that are meant to be returned directly to the user). Many sites, though, have some code that should be run on the server and then the result of that code should be returned to the user.
In your case, you have a Machine whose condition we don't know other than that it is running the Program Apache (or probably "Apache HTTP Server"). Apache HTTP server is very old and proven and pretty good at serving raw files back to users. It can also run some Programming Languages like PHP and return the result.
However, Next.JS is built on top of the Programming Language Javascript, which Apache does not have the ability to run. Next.JS instead wants its Server Program to be Node.
So the problem here is basically that you have a hammer, but only screws. You can't use the tool you have, Apache, to solve the problem you need solved, running Node code and returning the result. To get around this you have two options:
First, you can find a way to access the Server Machine that is currently running Apache and tell it, instead, to run Node pointed at your Next.JS code whenever it starts up. This might not be possible, depending on who owns this machine and how they've set it up.
Second, and probably easier, is to abandon this Machine and instead use a Server as a Service. Heroku, AWS, and Netlify all support Next.JS and have a free tier. The easiest solution, though, is probably to just deploy it on Vercel, which is a Server as a Service run by the same team that makes Next.JS and which has a very generous free tier for you to get started with.
The good news, though, is that yes next.js does totally support being hosted from a subdomain.
Next.JS allows you to build fully functional Node Applications, as well as simple statically-generated sites like Jeckyl or Docpad. If your use case is a simple statically generated site look here: https://nextjs.org/docs/advanced-features/static-html-export
In particular the next build && next export command will create all the HTML and assets necessary to host a site directly via an HTTP server like Apache or Ngnix. Contents will be outputed to an out directory that could serve as the server root.
Pay very close attention to what features are not supported via this approach.
I'm moving my Three.js app and its customized node.js environment, which I've been running on my local machine to Google Cloud. I want to test things out there, and hopefully soon get some early alpha testing going with other people.
I'm not sure which is the wiser way to go... to upload the repo I've been running locally as-is onto a VM which users would then access via the VM's external IP until I get a good name to call this app... or merge my local node.js environment with what's available via the Google App Engine and run it on GAE.
Issues I'm running into with the linux VM approach... I'm not sure how to do the equivalent on the VM of what I've been doing locally. In Windows Powershell I cd into the app directory and then enter node index.js. I'm assuming by this method of deployment that I can get the app running as soon as the browser hits the external IP. I should mention too that the app will allow users to save content as well as upload images, and eventually, 3D models as well as json datasets.
Issues I'm running into with the App Engine approach: it looks like I only have access to a linux-based command line, and have to install all the node.js modules manually. Meanwhile I have a bunch of files to upload, both the server-side node files and all the frontend stuff. I don't see where to upload those files, and ultimately what I'd like to do is have access to a visual, editable file-tree interface, as I have in Windows and FileZilla, so I can swap files in and out, etc. Alternatively I suppose I could import a repo from Github? Github would be fine as long as I can visually see what's happening. Is there a visual interface for file structure available in GAE somewhere? Am I missing something?
I went through the GAE "Hello World" tutorial and that worked fine, but was left scratching my head afterward regarding how to actually see and edit the guts of the tutorial app, or even where to look for the files.
So first off, I want to determine what's the better approach, and then if possible, determine how to make the experience of getting my app up there and running a more visual, user-friendly experience.
Thanks.
There are many things to consider when choosing how to run an app, but my instinct for your use case is to simply use a VM on GCE. The most compelling reason for this is that it's the most similar thing to what you have now. You can SSH into the machine and run nohup node index.js & (or node index.js inside tmux/screen if you prefer) and it will start the app and not stop it when you log out of SSH. You can use SCP / SFTP with whatever GUI client you want to upload files. You don't have to learn anything new! If you wanted to, you could even use a Windows VM (although I think you have to pay a little more than for a comparable Linux VM due to the licensing fees).
That said, the other way is arguably more "correct" by modern development standards, but it will involve a lot more learning that will prevent you from getting your app running somewhere other than your laptop in the short term:
First, you'll need to learn about Docker and stateless containers, which is basically what your app runs inside of on AppEngine.
Next, you'll need to learn how to hook up a separate stateful service (database, file server, ...) to your app's container so you can store your files, etc. in it, and then probably rewrite your app somewhat to use it to store stuff.
Next, you'll probably want some way to automatically deploy this from code instead of manually doing it, which gets you into build systems, package managers, artifact storage, continuous integration systems, and on and on and on.
This latter path is certainly what you should choose for a long-running production service if you work with a big team of developers -- but that doesn't mean that it's necessarily the right path for your project today. If you don't care about scaling up automatically, load balancing between nodes, redundant copies of your app running in different regions in case there's a natural disaster, etc., then go with the easy way for now, and you can learn new ways to improve the service when they're actually needed.
There is a network of around 100000 PCs, each of which contains an in-memory XML file whose contents I need to search from a central server. This XML file is generated by a windows service that runs on each PC.
The search query is generated at the central server, propagated to each of the PCs on the network, and if information in the in-memory XML matches the search query, then the list of all matching PCs needs to be sent back to the server and results displayed in 20 seconds or less.
In view of the scalability and concurrency requirements, I am planning to utilize node js to solve this problem. But I've never used node js before. Could someone on this forum please guide me how to architect a solution to this using node js? The 100000 PCs are spread across more than 50 LANs. I've been reading up a lot about socket.io and other stuff about node js, but can't figure out a solution to this. Could someone please guide me? Which node package can help me to read an in-memory XML file? If something changes on a PC's in-memory file while a user is viewing results about it on the server, those changes as well need to be updated in real time on the result viewer. Apart from node js, is there anything else using which I could get this done?
Use Express for NodeJs. It's a webserver, so you can issue HTTP commands to it https://expressjs.com/
Please forgive me if this has been asked but I could not find an answer.
How can one move a website from one server to another without having to download the files (zipped or otherwise) and then uploading to the new server?
I suspect this is possible via ftp, but am not sure how to do so.
Thank you
In standard of FTP protocol is this function. But in my experience this is hard to configure for work and not any servers support this feature.
More simple is use SSH. If you have SSH access to any of this servers then you can login to shell on one server and transfer files from/to other server via FTP.
Sorry about the really ambiguous question, I really have no idea how to word it though hopefully I can give you more detail here.
I am developing a project where a user can log into a website and book a server to run a game for a specific amount of time. When the time is up the server stops running and the players on the server are kicked off. The website part is not a problem, I am doing this in PHP and everything works. It has a calendar system to book a server and can generate config files based on what the user wants.
My question is what should I use to run the specific game server on the linux box with those config files at the correct time? I have got this working with bash scripts and cron, but it seems very un-elegant. It literally uses FTP to connect to the website so it can download all the necessary config files and put them in a folder for that game and time. I was wondering if there was a better way of doing this. Perhaps writing a program in C, but I am not sure how to go about doing this.
(I am not asking for someone to hold my hand and tell me "write this code here", just some ideas of a better way of approaching this problem)
Thanks so much guys!
Edit: The webserver is a totaly different machine. I would theoreticaly like to have more than one game server where each of them "connects" (at the moment FTP) to the webserver, gets a file saying what it has to do at a specific time and downloads any associated files then disconnects.
I think at is better suited for running one time jobs than cron.
For a better approach for the downloading files etc, you should give more details on your setup (like, the website and the game server, are they on the same machine? Or the same network? etc etc.
You need a distributed task scheduler. With that, you can:
Schedule command "X" to be run at a certain time.
Specify the machine (or ask it to pick a machine from a pool of available machines)
Webserver would send request to this scheduler via command line or via web service when user selects a game server and a time.
You can have a look at : http://www.acelet.com/super/SuperWatchdog/index.html
EDIT :
One more option :http://jobscheduler.sourceforge.net/