Quick Way To Run A Nodejs App As A Service Using Forever Service

Summary:

We explore running a Nodejs app forever as a service(in background and after reboots). Note that this has been tested only Ubuntu 14.04 LTS only and might not work as expected on other OSs.

Short Steps:

1. npm install -g forever

2. npm install -g forever-service

3. forever-service install nameofservice --script yournodejsapp.js

4. sudo service start nameofservice

A Sample Nodejs app

For our example we are going to create a simple http web server using the example at the official express library github https://github.com/expressjs/serve-static

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var express = require('express') var serveStatic = require('serve-static') var app = express() app.use(serveStatic('public/ftp', {'index': ['default.html', 'default.htm']})) app.listen(3000)

Let's say we save the file as server.js. You can then test it by running 

node server.js

If you want to test if it's running then you can open another console and type 

nc -v localhost 3000

Forever

Now let's say you close the console, your app will stop to run which is normal. There are lot of ways to run an executable in background but the easiest way for a Nodejs developer is Forever. You can install it easily with 

npm install -g forever

Using Forever is pretty easy, you can run your app using

forever start server.js

Then you can check running apps using

forever list

Then you can stop running apps using their index

forever stop 0

More information can be found here https://github.com/foreverjs/forever

However forever is only going to run your app in background and it will not automatically restart your app when your server is rebooted.

Forever-Service

Forever service addresses this specifically. There are other ways of running your app on startup but again I think this is going to be easier for Nodejs developers. Installation is pretty simple(make sure you installed forever first)

npm install -g forever-service 

Install your app as a service

forever-service install nameofservice --script server.js

Then you can start the service like any other service

sudo service start nameofservice

if you are not sure that the script is running you can still netcat

nc -v localhost 3000

More information can be found at: https://github.com/zapty/forever-service

Final Words

As always we hope that this post was helpful. Don't hesitate to comment if you have any question!