I am entirely new to backend development so this might be a ridiculously easy and straightforward question, but I'm really not sure. I am trying to learn node.js for backend development, and all of the tutorials I have seen so far show how node can be used to run JavaScript from the terminal and create a server on local host. While this is a neat thing to do, I am stuck there and having difficulty understanding where to put my node.js code on cPanel and how to use it effectively along with the rest of my html/css/js code; all the examples I have seen are very isolated and don't have much interaction with these other files.
Again, I don't have any backend experience, so it would not be very helpful to explain this concept relative to another server-side language like Python, Ruby, or PHP, as I really have no idea where I would put any of the code for any of that stuff either or how it fits into the bigger picture. If the answer could maybe touch on how to integrate Python or PHP as well and general patterns for backend development---the easy stuff everyone assumes but no one explains---it would be much appreciated.
It doesn't matter where you put it. However you probably want to keep it in the folder of the username which is using it. I created a folder called app/ in my users folder and put all my crap in there. Then you simply set it up to listen on a port approved by your host.
You can use a .htaccess file in your public_html folder to redirect to the correct port number.
Your node.js will handle routing. So to go to certain css/html files you will have to set that up in your node.js code.
Related
Folks, forgive me if this is a repeat question: I couldn't think of how to phrase it in the search engine. I'm developing an Intranet-based set of applications with the front end (individual apps) in React and the back-end using node.js and Express. I had been using Electron JS but like the Express solution since all web browsers on the Intranet can use the apps.
I'm running into a bit of a circular dependency when it comes to production, though. Since my REST back-end handles all local calls (like node fs) I use REST calls to load and save preferences files from the front end. However, I'd like to be able to set the REST URI from a config file or setting. Since the only way I can access this setting is a call to the REST back-end, I'm stuck. It's possible the client may want to change the host URL and the port for the server. This will affect all axios calls to the REST back end in every React application I have. Instead of calling http://localhost:5000/api-call/ I'd like the localhost and port number to be read from config.
I am transpiling the React apps and storing them in a static folder underneath the REST server. I would like to avoid something complex or additional like REDIS or another local database. My projects don't require any heavy database setups.
Am I simply implementing poor architecture here? I even thought of env variables but then will get into setting them on each client's system which takes away from the flexibility of using a web server in the first place. Any thoughts to move me in the right direction would be greatly appreciated!!!
I knew if I posted this, I might find an answer.
I'm not sure how elegant a solution this is but I could test the env for development vs. production. If in production, I can then use window.href (host and port) to get the information I need. I think this will work but would still love to hear some other thoughts from those with far more experience than I have!
I am about to begin the process of creating a Windows-based utility app to manage localized expressjs server that will utilize a graphical Windows based application to manage some of the features of this service
however before I begin I would like to speak with the community to try to get some advice Advice on how to properly protect the code since it will all be node JS bees I need to make sure it’s protected and some of my initial reading online seems to show that using electron by not be the most Safeway saw that being said how are you guys handling this to keep node JS these code protected with electron and in my case On windows environment
Any advice would be greatly appreciated much thanks
tl;dr You can and it is not worth the effort. Just pack your source into an asar file, it keeps most people away from it.
Long answer:
Use the asar option when building your app.
Obfuscate the code with an uglifier.
Use WASM
Language bindings to grab your data from a compiled format
neonjs for Rust
edge-js for C#
N-API, NAN for C/C++
Otherwise, your files are scripts, all these steps only slow down an attacker (tactic of many defenses), but they will not prevent them from accessing them. The devTools are fairly easy to get opened and people will be able to read the code in some way, shape or form. And if someone gets your obfuscated code, it is simple to reconstruct what is happening (see here for reference: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y6Uzinz3DRU)
If you want to protect yourself from code manipulation, there are better ways to do it, like Hashing, Context Isolation etc. Electron has a whole chapter on the matter.
https://github.com/electron/electron/blob/master/docs/tutorial/security.md
Small Update (2020):
I've seen this library a few weeks ago and thought it would show a nice way to further obfuscate the code from being read by external parties
https://github.com/OsamaAbbas/bytenode
The basic idea is to compile the JS into bytecode for V8. This works very well for Electron and is definitely a hurdle not everyone will get over. But, this will not protect your code from being turned back into readable JS. It's just another layer of protection to make it more difficult.
I have a web-server with cPanel, but I didn't find the method to make the website properly work. I made an aldomain, updloaded the project, but it doesn't recognise the base css, nodejs server etc... Tha main question is how to run my own server.js file on the server(?!), and how to make it looks like on localhost? Is it possible? If it's not, how can I publish it? I know that I shouldn't send this message here, because it doesn't contain any code, but nobody tells me where can I ask theese kind of questions. Can you tell me this too, please?
Bad news is cPanel doesn't support Node.js. Prof link
Good news is here you can make question without any code.
I've just started my IT degree and I'm a beginner to the use of APIs (and forums like this) so I am truly sorry if my question is to vaguely explained or if it is just plain stupid :), on top of that I'm not a native English speaker :P. Okay, so I'm trying to use Google trends' api which I installed in my server with putty by using sudo npm install google-trends-api. (it can be found here https://www.npmjs.com/package/google-trends-api#installation) As I undestand it, this is a server side api so the scripts that I write with the methods provided for this api will not run on an explorer as normal js files do. There is an example that makes use of the API that I found on the page which is as follows
var googleTrends = requite('google-trends-api');
googleTrends.hotTrends('US')
.then(function(results){
console.log(results);
})
.catch(function(err){
console.log(err);
});
this outputs a list of 20 items on the console when I use it on node.
I would like to know if there is a way to assign those results to a variable and then use that variable in a normal javascript script inside a html file. I do not know anything about node.js and the like, and I would like to actually do some research instead of asking here but I was going to use a different approach to acquire such information but now I've had to change my plans and do not have enough time and given I consider this is a fairly easy problem to resolve (maybe?) I would really appreciate it if someone could walk me through the basics of each step. THanks :) and have a nice day.
Your question is quite broad. Node.js is Chrome's V8 engine bundled with some libraries to do I/O and networking. This enables us to JavaScript outside of the browser and to create backend services or servers in general (in your case). I hope that you are aware of this difference :)
The first thing that you have to do, is to have a look at express.js and to create a simple server. It will not be more than 20 lines of code. Then you have to enrich this with more stuff like a template engine (handlebars.js, jade etc). You have to enable the server to serve static files that will be finally your js, css and image files. Creating this simple server you will be able to serve simple html page in the first place. On top of that you should have the client side javascript that you have to write and now you can use the module above. Unfortunately, you are not able to use this module directly on a javascript file that you will write. To be able to use this module you have to transcompile this thing into javascript that browser understand*. Remember that browser does not understand the require statement and some old browsers possibly will have issues with the promises that this module is using. These are the things that should be compiled. You have to use a tool like browserify for this and the compiled file that this will extract it must be included in the scripts of your html page.
Maybe there are quite a lot of concepts that you are not aware of or you don't understand them but spend a bit of time to understand them.
P.S.: I' ve replied under the assumption that google-trends-api module does not use things that are specific to node.js like the file-system for example.
I am coming from Microsoft world so please bear with me on this. I was told I could install node.js and use that as a web server instead of IIS. This is a very small business application. In IIS I can create virtual directory and point to the location of the web page and everything works just fine. Based on very little I read, I have few questions;
Is it possible to run node js as a windows service or any other form so that it runs for ever? I did find the forever package that I think I can use.
In IIS, I can create virtual directory set the port and thats it, I have myself a website.
I do not see any examples where I can use a directory where I have a web page, written in java script and point it to run as a web site. All the examples have some thing like server.js and that runs and routes the call. what is the other way to host web sites and use node.js to simple run as a fast web server.
I was told I could install node.js and use that as a web server instead of IIS.
This is true, but as you already found out then you are in charge of providing for things that IIS was already doing for you (e.g. automatically restart on reboot, or on crashes, hosting multiple sites by creating virtual folders, et cetera.)
You can indeed get all of these things worked out in Node.js and there are several libraries that help on each of these areas. It's not too hard but you'll need to do a bit of researching.
You can also run Node.js behind IIS. Take a look at iisnode http://tomasz.janczuk.org/2011/08/hosting-nodejs-applications-in-iis-on.html
Is it possible to run node js as a windows service or any other form so
that it runs for ever?
The library Forever takes care of restarting the site when it crashes...but I don't know if you can run it as a Windows Service. I haven't tried that.
In IIS, I can create virtual directory set the port and thats it,
I have myself a website.
I assume you are talking about a site that serves static HTML files, right? If that's the case that's very easy to support in Node.js either writing your own web server or using Express.js to serve static files.
I do not see any examples where I can use a directory where I have a web page,
written in java script and point it to run as a web site. All the examples
have some thing like server.js and that runs and routes the call.
Here is an extremely simple example to serve plain HTML files in Node.js https://gist.github.com/2573391 Don't use this in production, though. It's just an example and it does not have any kind of error handling or security.
what is the other way to host web sites and use node.js to simple run
as a fast web server.
As others have said, you should look into Express.js http://expressjs.com/ It provides some of the infrastructure that you are very likely going to need when building traditional web sites.
You say you're running a "very small business application" behind IIS. Unless it's written for Node.js (in JavaScript), it won't work.
There are no examples pointing to a directory and running that as a website, because that's not how things are done in Node.js. You write a Node.js-application and pull in a webserver-library.
Put simply, In Node.js, you don't embed the appliation in the webserver; you embed the webserver in the application.
When I used node.js, I redirected HTTP requests by a proxy server, nginx. I don’t know if you can directly bind node.js as an HTTP server, but for what’s it worth, nginx is pretty nice!
First things first, allow me to share an introduction. IMHO you should take this decision ( of moving from IIS to nodeJS) by adding various parameters. I belong to the Java & PHP community yet I use NodeJS to achieve extremely specific implementation where NodeJS perform the fastest ( fast IO, AJAX-JSON responses & more ). As you are coming with a Microsoft background you should bare with less comfortable solutions.
Yes, its possible to run NodeJs as a windows service and Forever will do fine.
and yes you can create "Virtual Directories" but by creating symbolic links to each of your customer's web site.
I recommend to take a good look at bouncy & express, If you're willing to take this step then these packages is just what you need.
Cheers!