Welcome to Umbler's Node.JS HUB

Here you'll find all tutorials about Node.JS at Umbler. From setup to deploy, check out the main steps to host your Node.JS website/app.

Precautions with package.json

In order to deploy your Node.JS application, you must take some precautions with a file called package.json.

You need to make sure it has the start script on the scripts part, as you can see in the package.json example below.

{
  "name": "umbler-node",
  "version": "1.0.0",
  "description": "",
  "main": "app.js",
  "scripts": {
    "start": "node app"
  },
  "author": "",
  "license": "ISC",
  "dependencies": {
    "check-node-version": "^2.1.0",
    "cluster": "^0.7.7",
    "express": "^4.15.2",
    "os": "^0.1.1"
  }
}

In the example, the "start":"node app" or "start":"your starting file" must exist so your application can run properly. 

How to deploy your application?

The first step is to access Umbler's Control Panel > Your Domain > Site > Deploy > and copy your Git URL:

After getting your Git URL, you should start a Git repository in your application folder if you haven't already. You can then push a commit into this repository. Here is an example of instructions for starting the repository, committing and pushing it to the Umbler server.

If you deploy with a yarn.lock file, the server is going to identify the file and instead of executing NPM INSTALL, it will execute YARN INSTALL.

git init
git add .
git commit -m "My node.JS deploy at Umbler"
git remote add umbler YOUR_GIT_URL
git push umbler master

The first command used is git init, responsible for initializing your Git repository. You can get more information about Git here: Accessing Git SCM.

Once the push is executed to Umbler's server, we'll check if among your files there's a node_modules directory. That's where the dependencies of your application are kept. If you deploy your application with node_modules, NPM INSTALL won't be executed. If you deploy your application without node_modules (that's usually what people do), NPM INSTALL will be executed and all the dependencies from your package.json will be downloaded.

When the deploy is finished, Git will return a message similar to this one:

remote: Build OK
remote: Umbler: Build completed successfully!  Your application will be updated and published soon.
remote: Umbler: Temp address: http://node-na-umbler-com.umbler.net
To https://tatooine.deploy.umbler.com/7e8vlyok/node-at-umbler-com.git

It's important to remember that your application must be running on port 3000, or using an environment variable PORT set to this value, so your application can be accessed externally.

Here's an example:

var express = require('express');
var app = express();

//... your code here ...
                                
var port = process.env.PORT || 3000;
app.listen(port, function () {
    console.log('Umbler listening on port %s', port);
});

Now that you have deployed and your application is being published, you just need to wait the server to start!  

Verifying your deploy logs

 You can verify your deploys logs going to Umbler's Control Panel > Deploy and clicking on see logs, as shown in the image below:

Clicking on see logs you'll be able to see your deploy logs:

Verifying your application logs

In order to verify your application logs, you need to enable them first.

An important detail is that your application logs stay available for 24 hours only. You can enable them accessing Umbler's Control Panel > Your domain > Logs, and clicking on Enable for 24h as shown in the image below:

 Once enabled, it will look like this:

Node.JS environment variables

On Umbler's Control Panel, you can define environment variables that your application can use. By default our system has already a few predefined variables (PORT, TZ, LANG, and LANGUAGE) that cannot be changed.

You can access the environment variables going on Umbler's Control Panel > Website > Settings > Node.JS Environment Variables

You'll see a similar page:

Now you can see all your environment variables. By default the PORT variable is created, as our Node.JS runs on port 3000, we have already created this PORT environment variable in order to help you :)

 To create a new environment variable just click on Create environment variable (marked with the red square) and use it in your application through the following code:

Here's an example of how to call the environment variable in your application

process.env.VARIABLE_NAME

Scaling on Node.JS

In Umbler you can scale your application both horizontally andvertically, you can increase the size of your container and also increase the number of processes that suit your application.

It's simple to upgrade your plan by going to the Control Panel > Site > And then clicking on the button marked in orange, followed by the button in red.

Now you will be on this screen:

Choose how you want to scale your application, how many processes you want Node.JS to have available to use, and how large they must be.

Node.JS errors

Transpilers

{
  "name": "babelandnode",
  "version": "1.0.0",
  "description": "",
  "main": "index.js",
  "scripts": {
    "test": "echo \"Error: no test specified\" && exit 1",
    "start": "node index",
    "postinstall": "babel-node index.js"
  },
  "author": "",
  "license": "ISC",
  "devDependencies": {
    "babel-cli": "^6.24.1",
    "babel-preset-latest": "^6.24.1"
  }
}

{
  "name": "heros",
  "description": "The tour of heros",
  "version": "1.0.0",
  "private": true,
  "author": "Brian Love",
  "scripts": {
    "dev": "NODE_ENV=development nodemon ./bin/www",
    "grunt": "grunt",
    "start": "node ./bin/www",
    "postinstall": "grunt"
  },
  "dependencies": {
    "body-parser": "^1.15.2",
    "cookie-parser": "^1.4.3",
    "errorhandler": "^1.4.3",
    "express": "^4.14.0",
    "method-override": "^2.3.6",
    "morgan": "^1.7.0",
    "pug": "^2.0.0-beta6"
  },
  "devDependencies": {
    "@types/body-parser": "0.0.33",
    "@types/cookie-parser": "^1.3.30",
    "@types/errorhandler": "0.0.30",
    "@types/method-override": "0.0.29",
    "@types/morgan": "^1.7.32",
    "grunt": "^1.0.1",
    "grunt-contrib-copy": "^1.0.0",
    "grunt-contrib-watch": "^1.0.0",
    "grunt-ts": "^6.0.0-beta.3",
    "nodemon": "^1.11.0",
    "typescript": "^2.0.8"
  }
}

{
  "name": "webpack-demo",
  "version": "1.0.0",
  "description": "",
  "main": "index.js",
  "scripts": {
    "start": "webpack-dev-server --inline --hot --port 3000",
    "build": "webpack -p --port 3000"
  },
  "keywords": [],
  "author": "",
  "license": "ISC",
  "devDependencies": {
    "babel-core": "^6.21.0",
    "babel-loader": "^6.2.10",
    "babel-preset-es2015": "^6.18.0",
    "css-loader": "^0.26.1",
    "extract-text-webpack-plugin": "^2.0.0-beta.4",
    "file-loader": "^0.9.0",
    "node-sass": "^4.1.0",
    "sass-loader": "^4.1.0",
    "style-loader": "^0.13.1",
    "url-loader": "^0.5.7",
    "webpack": "^2.1.0-beta.28",
    "webpack-dev-server": "^2.2.0-rc.0"
  },
  "dependencies": {
    "d3": "^4.4.0",
    "lodash": "^4.17.2"
  }
}

Ghost at Umbler

In order to run Ghost with Node.JS you need to change some configurations at you config.js file.

Make sure you application is available on port 3000 and also that your host is configure to 0.0.0.0, as the following example:

var path = require('path'),
    config;

config = {
    production: {
        url: 'http://localhost:3000',
        mail: {},
        database: {
            client: 'sqlite3',
            connection: {
                filename: path.join(__dirname, '/content/data/ghost.db')
            },
            debug: false
        },

        server: {
            port: '3000',
            host: '0.0.0.0'
        }
    }
    ...

Configuring New Relic

The first step is to set up on the website New Relic and then create an application in Node.JS there, so you'll receive a key to continue with your configuration.

To set up New Relic on your application, you need to install the New Relic package, simply open your Git Bash or any terminal and run the following command:

npm install newrelic --save

After installing the module, your will access the node_modules folder > newrelic and then copy the newrelic.js file to the root folder of your application.

After moving it to the root folder, open the newrelic.js file on a text editor and place your key and the name of your application.

Here is an example of a file that is correctly configured:

'use strict'
exports.config = {
  app_name: ['Test Umbler'],

  license_key: '94f417a76a019a3de38285a589c97631ec955eb5',
  logging: {
    level: 'info'
  }
}

After configuring newrelic.js file, you just need to add the require('newrelic') at the beginning of your server file (the one that starts Node.JS, usually called index.js or app.js). Here's an example of the file:

require('newrelic')
const express = require('express')
const app = express()

app.get('/', (req, res) => {
    res.send('test')
})

app.listen(3000, () => {
    console.log('running at 3000')
})

A few minutes after your application starts being accessed, you'll be able to see logs of your application on New Relic's Control Panel.

Bower

To use Bower you need to send your node_modules folder when you do a git push.

Nodemon

You don't need to use Nodemon, because when your container goes into production, any error that occurs with your application will restart the container automatically. Also, for security reasons we do not allow the installation of Nodemon, because to install it, run the npm install nodemon -g command, and your are not allowed to install global dependenciess.

To upload your server with us, simply configure your package.json with the start command.

app.get('*', (req, res, next) => {
    if (req.headers['x-forwarded-proto'] != 'https') {
        // check if the header returns HTTP or HTTPS
        res.redirect("https://" + req.headers.host + req.url);
        // redirects to HTTPS
    } else {
        next();
        // continues executing the file
    }
});