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Prerequisites

Step 1 � Installing Node.js

Step 2 � Creating a Node.js Application

Step 3 � Installing PM2

Step 4 � Setting Up Nginx as a Reverse Proxy Server

Conclusion

Updated on March 31, 2021

Kathleen Juell and Lisa Tagliaferri

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Choose a di�erent version or distribution.

Node.js is an open-source JavaScript runtime environment for building server-side and

networking applications. The platform runs on Linux, macOS, FreeBSD, and Windows.
Though you can run Node.js applications at the command line, this tutorial will focus on
running them as a service. This means that they will restart on reboot or failure and are
safe for use in a production environment.

In this tutorial, you will set up a production-ready Node.js environment on a single

Ubuntu 20.04 server. This server will run a Node.js application managed by PM2, and
provide users with secure access to the application through an Nginx reverse proxy. The
Nginx server will offer HTTPS using a free certificate provided by Let’s Encrypt.

Deploy your Node applications from GitHub using DigitalOcean App Platform. Let
DigitalOcean focus on scaling your app.

This guide assumes that you have the following:

• An Ubuntu 20.04 server setup, as described in the initial server setup guide for
Ubuntu 20.04. You should have a non-root user with sudo privileges and an active
firewall.
• A domain name pointed at your server’s public IP. This tutorial will use the domain
name throughout.
• Nginx installed, as covered in How To Install Nginx on Ubuntu 20.04.
• Nginx configured with SSL using Let’s Encrypt certificates. How To Secure Nginx
with Let’s Encrypt on Ubuntu 20.04 will walk you through the process.

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When you’ve completed the prerequisites, you will have a server serving your domain’s
default placeholder page at https:// example.com / .

Let’s begin by installing the latest LTS release of Node.js, using the NodeSource package
archives.

First, install the NodeSource PPA in order to get access to its contents. Make sure you’re
in your home directory, and use curl to retrieve the installation script for the most
recent LTS version of Node.js from its archives.

Copy

$ cd ~
$ curl -sL https://deb.nodesource.com/setup_ 14 .x -o nodesource_setup.sh

You can inspect the contents of this script with nano or your preferred text editor:

Copy

$ nano nodesource_setup.sh

When you’re done inspecting the script, run it under sudo :

Copy

$ sudo bash nodesource_setup.sh

The PPA will be added to your configuration and your local package cache will be
updated automatically. After running the setup script from Nodesource, you can install
the Node.js package:

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$ sudo apt install nodejs

To check which version of Node.js you have installed after these initial steps, type:

Copy

$ node -v

Output
v 14.4.0

When installing from the NodeSource PPA, the Node.js executable is called nodejs ,
rather than node .

The nodejs package contains the nodejs binary as well as npm , a package manager for
Node modules, so you don’t need to install npm separately.

npm uses a configuration file in your home directory to keep track of updates. It will be
created the first time you run npm . Execute this command to verify that npm is installed
and to create the configuration file:

Copy

$ npm -v

Output
6.14.5

In order for some npm packages to work (those that require compiling code from source,
for example), you will need to install the build-essential package:

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$ sudo apt install build-essential

You now have the necessary tools to work with npm packages that require compiling
code from source.

With the Node.js runtime installed, let’s move on to writing a Node.js application.

Let’s write a Hello World application that returns “Hello World” to any HTTP requests.
This sample application will help you get Node.js set up. You can replace it with your
own application — just make sure that you modify your application to listen on the
appropriate IP addresses and ports.

First, let’s create a sample application called hello.js :

Copy

$ cd ~
$ nano hello.js

Insert the following code into the file:

~/hello.js Copy

const http = require('http');

const hostname = 'localhost';

const port = 3000;

const server = http.createServer((req, res) => {

res.statusCode = 200;
res.setHeader('Content-Type', 'text/plain');
res.end('Hello World!\n');
});

server.listen(port, hostname, () => {

console.log(`Server running at http://${hostname}:${port}/`);
});

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Save the file and exit the editor.

This Node.js application listens on the specified address ( localhost ) and port ( 3000 ),
and returns “Hello World!” with a 200 HTTP success code. Since we’re listening on
localhost , remote clients won’t be able to connect to our application.

To test your application, type:

Copy

$ node hello.js

You will receive the following output:

Output
Server running at http://localhost:3000/

Running a Node.js application in this manner will block additional commands until
the application is killed by pressing CTRL+C .

To test the application, open another terminal session on your server, and connect to
localhost with curl :

Copy

$ curl http://localhost: 3000

If you get the following output, the application is working properly and listening on the
correct address and port:

Output
Hello World!

If you do not get the expected output, make sure that your Node.js application is running
and configured to listen on the proper address and port.

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Once you’re sure it’s working, kill the application (if you haven’t already) by pressing
CTRL+C .

Next let’s install PM2, a process manager for Node.js applications. PM2 makes it possible
to daemonize applications so that they will run in the background as a service.

Use npm to install the latest version of PM2 on your server:

Copy

$ sudo npm install pm2@latest -g

The -g option tells npm to install the module globally, so that it’s available system-wide.

Let’s first use the pm2 start command to run your application, hello.js , in the
background:

Copy

$ pm2 start hello.js

This also adds your application to PM2’s process list, which is outputted every time you
start an application:

Output
...
[PM2] Spawning PM2 daemon with pm2_home=/home/sammy/.pm2
[PM2] PM2 Successfully daemonized
[PM2] Starting /home/sammy/hello.js in fork_mode (1 instance)
[PM2] Done.
┌────┬────────────────────┬──────────┬──────┬───────────┬──────────┬──────────┐
│ id │ name │ mode │ ↺ │ status │ cpu │ memory │
├────┼────────────────────┼──────────┼──────┼───────────┼──────────┼──────────┤
│ 0 │ hello │ fork │ 0 │ online │ 0% │ 25.2mb │
└────┴────────────────────┴──────────┴──────┴───────────┴──────────┴──────────┘

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As indicated above, PM2 automatically assigns an App name (based on the filename,
without the .js extension) and a PM2 id . PM2 also maintains other information, such
as the PID of the process, its current status, and memory usage.

Applications that are running under PM2 will be restarted automatically if the application
crashes or is killed, but we can take an additional step to get the application to launch on
system startup using the startup subcommand. This subcommand generates and
configures a startup script to launch PM2 and its managed processes on server boots:

Copy

$ pm2 startup systemd

The last line of the resulting output will include a command to run with superuser
privileges in order to set PM2 to start on boot:

Output
[PM2] Init System found: systemd
sammy
[PM2] To setup the Startup Script, copy/paste the following command:
sudo env PATH=$PATH:/usr/bin /usr/lib/node_modules/pm2/bin/pm2 startup systemd -u

Run the command from the output, with your username in place of sammy :

Copy

$ sudo env PATH=$PATH:/usr/bin /usr/lib/node_modules/pm2/bin/pm2 startup systemd

As an additional step, we can save the PM2 process list and corresponding
environments:

Copy

$ pm2 save

You have now created a systemd unit that runs pm2 for your user on boot. This pm2

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instance, in turn, runs hello.js .

Start the service with systemctl :

Copy

$ sudo systemctl start pm2- sammy

If at this point you encounter an error, you may need to reboot, which you can achieve
with sudo reboot .

Check the status of the systemd unit:

Copy

$ systemctl status pm2- sammy

For a detailed overview of systemd, please review Systemd Essentials: Working with
Services, Units, and the Journal.

In addition to those we have covered, PM2 provides many subcommands that allow you
to manage or look up information about your applications.

Stop an application with this command (specify the PM2 App name or id ):

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$ pm2 stop app_name_or_id

Restart an application:

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$ pm2 restart app_name_or_id

List the applications currently managed by PM2�

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Copy

$ pm2 list

Get information about a specific application using its App name :

Copy

$ pm2 info app_name

The PM2 process monitor can be pulled up with the monit subcommand. This displays
the application status, CPU, and memory usage:

Copy

$ pm2 monit

Note that running pm2 without any arguments will also display a help page with example
usage.

Now that your Node.js application is running and managed by PM2, let’s set up the
reverse proxy.

Your application is running and listening on localhost , but you need to set up a way for
your users to access it. We will set up the Nginx web server as a reverse proxy for this
purpose.

In the prerequisite tutorial, you set up your Nginx configuration in the /etc/nginx/
sites-available/ example.com file. Open this file for editing:

Copy

$ sudo nano /etc/nginx/sites-available/ example.com

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Within the server block, you should have an existing location / block. Replace the
contents of that block with the following configuration. If your application is set to listen
on a different port, update the highlighted portion to the correct port number:

/etc/nginx/sites-available/example.com

server {
...
location / {
proxy_pass http://localhost: 3000 ;
proxy_http_version 1.1;
proxy_set_header Upgrade $http_upgrade;
proxy_set_header Connection 'upgrade';
proxy_set_header Host $host;
proxy_cache_bypass $http_upgrade;
}
...
}

This configures the server to respond to requests at its root. Assuming our server is
available at example.com , accessing https:// example.com / via a web browser would
send the request to hello.js , listening on port 3000 at localhost .

You can add additional location blocks to the same server block to provide access to
other applications on the same server. For example, if you were also running another
Node.js application on port 3001 , you could add this location block to allow access to it
via https:// example.com / app2 :

/etc/nginx/sites-available/example.com � Optional

server {
...
location / app2 {
proxy_pass http://localhost: 3001 ;
proxy_http_version 1.1;
proxy_set_header Upgrade $http_upgrade;
proxy_set_header Connection 'upgrade';
proxy_set_header Host $host;
proxy_cache_bypass $http_upgrade;
}
...

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Once you are done adding the location blocks for your applications, save the file and exit
your editor.

Make sure you didn’t introduce any syntax errors by typing:

Copy

$ sudo nginx -t

Restart Nginx:

Copy

$ sudo systemctl restart nginx

Assuming that your Node.js application is running, and your application and Nginx
configurations are correct, you should now be able to access your application via the
Nginx reverse proxy. Try it out by accessing your server’s URL (its public IP address or
domain name).

Congratulations! You now have your Node.js application running behind an Nginx reverse
proxy on an Ubuntu 20.04 server. This reverse proxy setup is flexible enough to provide
your users access to other applications or static web content that you want to share.

Thanks for learning with the DigitalOcean Community. Check out our offerings
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• December 6, 2020

I followed the instructions exactly and for some reason nodejs -v did not work
but node -v did.

Show replies Reply

• September 14, 2020

Please could you explain the correct way to set up environment variables in
production?

Show replies Reply

• February 19, 2023

Most of your tutorials are very helpful in making my day to day development
easier. I usually prefer to come here in case of such guidance because of the
practicality of the content. Thanks!

Reply

• March 23, 2022

run after the “sudo nano /etc/nginx/sites-available/example.com”

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sudo ln -s /etc/nginx/sites-available/example.com /etc/nginx/sites-enabled

Reply

• March 22, 2022

Thank you for this useful tutorial. I was struck at doing this for a month! Your
kindness is appreciated.

Reply

• December 18, 2021

I have a CMS running on a port 8055 and I have configured it according to what
this article. Yet I get some sort of MIME mismatch error even though I have
added X-Content-Type-Options to nosniff .

Failed to load module script: Expected a JavaScript module script but the server r

location / {
try_files $uri $uri/ =404;
}

location /directus {
proxy_pass http://localhost:8055/admin;
proxy_http_version 1.1;
proxy_set_header Upgrade $http_upgrade;
proxy_set_header Connection 'upgrade';
proxy_set_header Host $host;
proxy_cache_bypass $http_upgrade;
proxy_pass_header Content-Type;

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I had tried adding the mime.types into this location block but no success.

Show replies Reply

• September 25, 2021

Hey guys are these tutorials still accurate? Visiting an http://your_domain in a

browser gets refused because they use https by default now. I’ve used curl and
I’m getting my content back but it doesn’t work in a browser. Am I correct?

Show replies Reply

• January 29, 2021

Hi, thanks for the tutorial, it’s working great. However, I would like to be able to
access the application from other computers on the LAN the server belongs to.
At the moment, when I point to the IP of the server, I’m redirected to a standard
Nginx landing page instead of the Node.js app. I guess there is an option in the
server blocks to exclude an IP range ?

Reply

• January 25, 2021

Thank you for this useful tutorial.

It’s possible to have one for Apache2 ?

Reply

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• October 24, 2020

This comment has been deleted

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