Azure web deployment not displaying web page - node.js

Question

I'm writing a simple nodejs app to be deployed to azure.
The app works fine, 100%, but the web page I have to manage admin matters refuses to load.
It always displays internal server error. I'm using express and viewing the logs but they say nothing useful. The app doesn't crash so I cant understand why it wont display.
This is the simple hello world code I'm using for testing, and even that wont display.
var express = require('express');
var app = express();
app.use(express.static('website'));
app.listen(80);
Does anyone have any idea what could be the problem?
Edit: I forgot to include that I do set the port environment variable
var port = process.env.PORT || 80;
var baseHost = process.env.WEBSITE_HOSTNAME || 'localhost';
Thats at the top of my server.js, sorry about that.

Answer 1

guess your app is listening on the wrong port when running on Azure App Service.
you will have to get the port number from environment variable "process.env.port"
var app = require('express')();
var port = process.env.port || 8080; // 8080 for local or whatever number u want
var listener = app.listen(port, function(){
console.log('Listening on port ' + port);
});

Answer 2

Follow this blog to get a Node.js app working on Azure. I used this for a demo recently and it worked properly.
Create a Node.js web app in Azure App Service
You have to use GIT and Continuous Deployment to get Azure App Services to recognize and setup the right pieces for your node application to function, it also takes care of node packages for you automatically.
Hope this helps, TehDude

Answer 3

Try turning on logging to get a better idea of what's going on
From How to debug a Node.js web app in Azure App Service:
To enable the logging of stdout and stderr streams, you must create an
IISNode.yml file at the root of your Node.js application and add the
following:
loggingEnabled: true
This enables the logging of stderr and stdout from your Node.js
application.
The IISNode.yml file can also be used to control whether friendly
errors or developer errors are returned to the browser when a failure
occurs. To enable developer errors, add the following line to the
IISNode.yml file:
devErrorsEnabled: true
Once this option is enabled, IISNode will return the last 64K of
information sent to stderr instead of a friendly error such as "an
internal server error occurred".

Answer 4

Node.js application running on Azure Web Apps Service, is hosted on IIS handled mapping via IISNode, which gives a Named Pipe to receive the incoming requests, not a TCP port like you would use when running locally.
This Named Pipe has been defined as the port in Node.js runtime on Azure Web Apps. You can define the port in your app like: process.env.PORT || 3000, with which your app can run on Azure or locally.