How to separate express server code from Express business logic code? - node.js

Question

All the Node.js tutorials that I have followed have put everything in one file. It includes importing of libraries, routing, database connecting and starting of the server, by say, express.js:
var app = require('express');
app.get('/somePath', blah blah);
app.listen(...);
Now, I have 4 node servers behind an Nginx load balancer. It then becomes very difficult to have the source code updated on all the four servers.
Is there a way to keep the source code out of the server creation code in such a way that I can deploy the source code on the servers as one package? The server creation code should not know anything about routing or database connections. It should only be listening to changes in a folder and the moment a new module meta file appears, it starts hosting that web application.
Much like how we deploy a Java code packaged as war by Maven and deployed to the webapp of Tomcat, because Tomcat instantiation is not part of the source code. In node.js it seems server is also part of the source code.
For now, the packaging is not my concern. My concern is how to separate the logic and how do I point all my servers to one source code base?

Answer 1

Node.js or JavaScript for that matter doesn't have a concept like WAR. But what it does have is something similar. To achieve something WAR like, you would essentially bundle the code into one source file using something like webpack. However, this will probably not work with Node.js modules like http (Express uses `http since it likely calls or relies on native V8/C++ functions/libraries.
You could also use Docker and think of the Docker containers as WARs.

Answer 2

Here is what I figured out as a work around:
Keep the servers under a folder say, "server_clusters" and put different node servers there, namely: node1.js, node2.js, node3.js, node4.js, etc (I know, in the real world, the clusters would be different VMs or CPUs altogether but for now, I simply want to separate server creation logic from source code). These files would have this code snippet:
var constants = require('./prop');
var appBasePath = constants.APP_BASE_DIR;
var appFilePath = appBasePath + "/main";
var app = require(appFilePath);
//each server would have just different port number while everything else would remain constant
app.listen(8080, function (req, res) {
console.log("server started up");
});
Create a properties file that would have the path to the source code and export the object. That simple. This is what is used on line#1 in the above code
Create the source directory project wherever you want on the machine and just update its home directory in the constant file above. The source code directory can export one landing file that will provide the express app to the servers to start:
var express = require('express');
var app = express();
module.exports = app;
With this, there are multiple servers that are pointing to the same source code.
Hope this helps to those who are facing the same problem.
Other approaches are welcome.