Compile less files in node.js project on Windows Azure - node.js

I have a node.js project that compiles less files to css when I start the app. I do this by modifying the start script in package.json like so:
{
// omitted for brevity
start: { lessc public/stylesheets/styles.less > public/stylesheets/styles.css; node app.js; }
}
This works nicely locally, but not at all on my Windows Azure instance. Either because less needs to be installed globally on the machine for this to work, or because Azure doesn't run npm start. Or both. Either way, I need another solution!
I thought custom deployments was the answer (I'm using git remote deployment) and I tried modifying the deploy.cmd to include
call "lessc public/stylesheets/styles.less > public/stylesheets/styles.css;"
No joy. I even tried
call "%SITE_ROOT%/node_modules/less/bin/lessc %SITE_ROOT%/public/stylesheets/styles.less > %SITE_ROOT%/public/stylesheets/styles.css;
Am I coming at this the wrong way? How can I keep the compiled css files out of my source control and compile them on the server after deployment to Azure?
Thanks!

OK, I finally have this going, I think.
For some reason, even though the physical file is on the disk (I can see them with my FTP client), Azure is not letting me run lessc in the \node_modules\less\bin folder, but it does let me run the version in the \node_modules\.bin folder.
In the end, I added the following lines to my deploy.cmd file, and it worked!
IF NOT DEFINED LESS_COMPILER (
SET LESS_COMPILER=%DEPLOYMENT_TARGET%\node_modules\.bin\lessc
)
call %LESS_COMPILER% %DEPLOYMENT_TARGET%\public\stylesheets\styles.less > %DEPLOYMENT_TARGET%\public\stylesheets\styles.css

Related

AWS Elastic beanstalk - My deployed app can't seem to write pdf's into this directory i've set up in my project folder

I am currently using nodejs that is deployed in ebs on aws. I have a function that will write a pdf and then email it off but it says the file path can't be found. I've verified the project file seems to be /var/app/current/, but changing the reference of the file path doesn't seem to remove the error. Any idea how to go about fixing this?
The /var/app/current/ does not exist initially. Its only created at the very last stage of your deployment.
The deployment happens in /var/app/staging/ folder, and at the very last, once everything finishes, /var/app/staging/ is moved into /var/app/current/.
Thus, I would not recommend using absolute paths in your project or config files. Its better to use relative path or container_commands for config scripts:
The specified commands run as the root user, and are processed in alphabetical order by name. Container commands are run from the staging directory, where your source code is extracted prior to being deployed to the application server.

how to run windows service automatically using nodejs application? [duplicate]

Can any node.js experts tell me how I might configure node JS to autostart a server when my machine boots?
I'm on Windows
This isn't something to configure in node.js at all, this is purely OS responsibility (Windows in your case). The most reliable way to achieve this is through a Windows Service.
There's this super easy module that installs a node script as a windows service, it's called node-windows (npm, github, documentation). I've used before and worked like a charm.
var Service = require('node-windows').Service;
// Create a new service object
var svc = new Service({
name:'Hello World',
description: 'The nodejs.org example web server.',
script: 'C:\\path\\to\\helloworld.js'
});
// Listen for the "install" event, which indicates the
// process is available as a service.
svc.on('install',function(){
svc.start();
});
svc.install();
p.s.
I found the thing so useful that I built an even easier to use wrapper around it (npm, github).
Installing it:
npm install -g qckwinsvc
Installing your service:
> qckwinsvc
prompt: Service name: [name for your service]
prompt: Service description: [description for it]
prompt: Node script path: [path of your node script]
Service installed
Uninstalling your service:
> qckwinsvc --uninstall
prompt: Service name: [name of your service]
prompt: Node script path: [path of your node script]
Service stopped
Service uninstalled
If you are using Linux, macOS or Windows pm2 is your friend. It's a process manager that handle clusters very well.
You install it:
npm install -g pm2
Start a cluster of, for example, 3 processes:
pm2 start app.js -i 3
And make pm2 starts them at boot:
pm2 startup
It has an API, an even a monitor interface:
Go to github and read the instructions. It's easy to use and very handy. Best thing ever since forever.
If I'm not wrong, you can start your application using command line and thus also using a batch file. In that case it is not a very hard task to start it with Windows login.
You just create a batch file with the following content:
node C:\myapp.js
and save it with .bat extention. Here myapp.js is your app, which in this example is located in C: drive (spcify the path).
Now you can just throw the batch file in your startup folder which is located at C:\Users\%username%\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\Startup
Just open it using %appdata% in run dailog box and locate to >Roaming>Microsoft>Windows>Start Menu>Programs>Startup
The batch file will be executed at login time and start your node application from cmd.
This can easily be done manually with the Windows Task Scheduler.
First, install forever.
Then, create a batch file that contains the following:
cd C:\path\to\project\root
call C:\Users\Username\AppData\Roaming\npm\forever.cmd start server.js
exit 0
Lastly, create a scheduled task that runs when you log on. This task should call the batch file.
I would recommend installing your node.js app as a Windows service, and then set the service to run at startup. That should make it a bit easier to control the startup action by using the Windows Services snapin rather than having to add or remove batch files in the Startup folder.
Another service-related question in Stackoverflow provided a couple of (apprently) really good options. Check out How to install node.js as a Windows Service. node-windows looks really promising to me. As an aside, I used similar tools for Java apps that needed to run as services. It made my life a whole lot easier. Hope this helps.
you should try this
npm forever
https://www.npmjs.com/package/forever
Use pm2 to start and run your nodejs processes on windows.
Be sure to read this github discussion of how to set up task scheduler to start pm2: https://github.com/Unitech/pm2/issues/1079
Here is another solution I wrote in C# to auto startup native node server or pm2 server on Windows.
I know there are multiple ways to achieve this as per solutions shared above. I haven't tried all of them but some third party services lack clarity around what are all tasks being run in the background. I have achieved this through a powershell script similar to the one mentioned as windows batch file. I have scheduled it using Windows Tasks Scheduler to run every minute. This has been quite efficient and transparent so far. The advantage I have here is that I am checking the process explicitly before starting it again. This wouldn't cause much overhead to the CPU on the server. Also you don't have to explicitly place the file into the startup folders.
function CheckNodeService ()
{
$node = Get-Process node -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue
if($node)
{
echo 'Node Running'
}
else
{
echo 'Node not Running'
Start-Process "C:\Program Files\nodejs\node.exe" -ArgumentList "app.js" -WorkingDirectory "E:\MyApplication"
echo 'Node started'
}
}
CheckNodeService
Simply use this, install, run and save current process list
https://www.npmjs.com/package/pm2-windows-startup
By my exp., after restart server, need to logon, in order to trigger the auto startup.
Need to create a batch file inside project folder.
Write this code in batch file
#echo off
start npm start
save batch file with myprojectname.bat
Go to run command and press window + R
Enter this command :- shell:common startup
Press ok then folder will be open.
Folder path like as C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\StartUp
You will be paste your myprojectname.bat file.
You can check also. Need to system restart.
Copied directly from this answer:
You could write a script in any language you want to automate this (even using nodejs) and then just install a shortcut to that script in the user's %appdata%\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\Startup folder

Symfony3: Developing in Windows, Deploying in Linux. DIRECTORY-SEPARATOR

I have following problem:
I wrote a little homepage under Win10. All is fine but when I deploy my work in a Linux system I get the following message:
[2015-12-17 09:28:41] request.CRITICAL: Uncaught PHP Exception Twig_Error_Loader:
"The "/info/wwv/data/someone\vendor\symfony\symfony\src\Symfony\Bundle\FrameworkBundle/Resources/views" directory does not exist."
at /info/wwv/data/someone/vendor/twig/twig/lib/Twig/Loader/Filesystem.php line 94 [...]
I think there is some problem with the DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR or similar. The path exists and I can access it when I replace the backslashes with slashes.
Also my log is written in the directory app\logs instead real subdirectory app/logs.
Are you generating the cache on Windows and deploying the cache too instead of building it on the Linux server ? This is indeed not meant to work properly, due to differences between the OS.
Recent versions of Symfony allow to build the cache before deployment and copy it to the other server, but this does not work with Windows on one side and Linux on the other.
I had a similar issue. One day symfony 3.4 (on php7.2.16) stops working. After changing some path settings in AppKernel.php from '/' to '\\', everything works fine.
e.g.
public function getLogDir()
{
return dirname(__DIR__).'\\var\\logs';
}
It seems to be a windows-related issue with path-settings.
I had the same problem as my production server did not let me allocate enough ram to run composer and I had to run it locally.
Afterwards I got similar error (having wrong access path \ instead of / for linux)
Steps I took:
Replacing \\ with / in composer.json and composer.lock
Clearing the var/cache/*

Azure Websites Git Deployment dropping "/" in SCM_BUILD_ARGS

Description
We are in a current project based on MVC4/Umbraco using Azure Websites to host it.
We are using SCM_BUILD_ARGS to change between different build setups depending on which site in Azure we deploy to (Test and Prod).
This is done by defining an app setting in the UI:
SCM_BUILD_ARGS = /p:Environment=Test
Earlier we used Bitbucket Integration to deploy and here this setting worked like a champ.
We have now switched to using Git Deployment, pushing the changes from our build server when tests have passed.
But when we do this, we get a lovely error.
"MSB1008: Only one project can be specified."
Trying to redeploy the same failed deployment from the UI on Azure works though.
After some trial and error I ended going into the deploy.cmd and outputting the %SCM_BUILD_ARGS% value in the script.
It looks like the / gets dropped from SCM_BUILD_ARGS but only when using Git deploy, not Bitbucket Integration or redeploy from UI.
Workaround
As workaround I have for now added a / to the deploy.cmd script in front of the %SCM_BUILD_ARGS%, but this of course breaks redeploy, since we then have //p:Environment=Test in the MSBuild command when the value of %SCM_BUILD_ARGS% has been inserted.
:: 2. Build to the temporary path
IF /I "%IN_PLACE_DEPLOYMENT%" NEQ "1" (
:: Added / to SCM_BUILD_ARGS
%MSBUILD_PATH% "%DEPLOYMENT_SOURCE%\www\www.csproj" [....] /%SCM_BUILD_ARGS%
) ELSE (
%MSBUILD_PATH% "%DEPLOYMENT_SOURCE%\www\www.csproj" [....] /%SCM_BUILD_ARGS%
)
Question
Anyone know of a better solution for this problem or is it possibly a bug in Kudu?
We would love to have both deploy from Git and Redeploy working.
Could you try changing from "/" to "-"? For instance, AppSettings from /p:Environment=Test to -p:Environment=Test, see if it helps.
-p:Environment=Test did not work for me, the setting which worked for me at the time of this writing (September 2015) was
-p:Configuration=Test
There is clearly a Kudu bug in there, and you should open an issue on https://github.com/projectkudu/kudu. But for now, I can give you a workaround.
Instead of using an App Setting, include a .deployment file at the root of your repo, containing:
[config]
SCM_BUILD_ARGS = /p:Environment=Test
I think this will work in all cases. I suspect the bug has to do with bash messing up the environment in post receive hook scenarios, which only apply to direct git push but not to Bitbucket and Redeploy scenarios.
UPDATE: In fact, it's easy to see such weird bash behavior. Try this:
Open cmd.exe
Run: set foo=/abc to set a variable
Run bash
From bash, run cmd to launch a new cmd on top of bash (so cmd -> bash -> cmd)
Run set foo to get the value of foo
Result:
FOO=C:/Program Files (x86)/git/abc
So the value gets completely messed up. The key also gets upper cases, though that's mostly harmless. Strange stuff...

Deployment specific files in NodeJS

I am running my NodeJS project on DotCloud. Sadly, DotClouds deployment is "project-intrusive" that is it requires a supervisord.conf file to reside in the app-root. My deployment setup looks like this (using git repos).
project-deploy.git/prod/dotcloud.yml
project-deploy.git/prod/project -> project.git
(/prod/project use project.git as a submodule to access the code)
Now, my though of this is that I eventually would end up having different environments like this, e.g. dev, test and stage. The dev environment wouldn't even have a dotcloud.yml file since it is expected to run everything locally.
Well this works pretty well. But the problem is the supervisord.conf file which is just for deployment to dotcloud, now it resides in the project.git repo, but it doesn't belong there since it is just for deployment.
Are there any modules or NodeJS scripts that let you put deployment configuration files elsewhere, and maybe even specify what the target environment is, e.g. node deploy.js --production, or something like that?
There is a way to get rid of supervisord.conf. Assuming that you want to run e.g. node app.js, you can put the following in dotcloud.yml:
www:
type: nodejs
process: node app.js
Now, of course, it doesn't solve the problem of the dotcloud.yml file itself; but at least it reduces clutter a little bit -- removing it from the approot.

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