In this tutorial, we will be deploying a simple URL shortener API built-in express framework of NodeJs. It is pretty simple, uses MongoDB as its database, and you can find its source code here.
As a VPS, I use a Linode ubuntu server, and I assume that you have at least some basic knowledge when it comes to Linux.
Install Node and NPM#
curl -sL https://deb.nodesource.com/setup_12.x | sudo -E bash -
sudo apt install nodejs
# verify that bash is installed
node --version
Clone your Repo#
git clone [link to your github repo]
Install npm dependency packages#
cd yourproject
npm install
npm start (or whatever your start command)
# stop app
ctrl+C
To be able to run our app in the background continuously, we will be using a package called PM2. It is a daemon process manager that will help you manage and keep your application online.
sudo npm i pm2 -g
#(name of your appfile can be different)
pm2 start app
# Other pm2 commands
pm2 show app
pm2 status
pm2 restart app
pm2 stop app
pm2 logs (Show log stream)
pm2 flush (Clear logs)
# To make sure app starts when reboot
pm2 startup ubuntu
You should now be able to access your app using your IP and port. Now we want to set up a firewall blocking that port and set up NGINX as a reverse proxy so we can access it directly using port 80 (HTTP)
Set up a ufw firewall#
sudo ufw enable
sudo ufw status
sudo ufw allow ssh (Port 22)
sudo ufw allow http (Port 80)
sudo ufw allow https (Port 443)
Configure and install NGINX#
sudo apt install nginx
Navigate into
cd /etc/nginx/sites-enabled
and create a config file for Nginx, name it as your domain. In my case my domain is api.kydev.ml, so I will be naming it as api.kydev.ml.conf . To create a file you can use the touch command or directly open a file with vim, if the file doesn’t exist, vim will create a one and open it for you. So use the method below to create:
touch api.kydev.ml.conf
# OR
vim api.kydev.ml.conf
If you are not familiar with vim, for now, use touch command but for the future, you can take a look at this cheat sheet to learn it.
Open the file you have created with your favorite editor, in my case:
sudo vim /etc/nginx/sites-available/api.kydev.ml.conf
Add the following snippet, but don’t forget to modify it for your needs:
server {
server_name yourdomain.com www.yourdomain.com;
location / {
proxy_pass http://localhost:5000; #whatever port your app runs on
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;
}
}
Check NGINX config:#
# Check NGINX config
sudo nginx -t
# Restart NGINX
sudo service nginx restart
You should now be able to visit your IP with no port (port 80) and see your app. Now let’s add a domain. Congrats!
Add the domain#
Add an A record for @ and for www to your droplet, It may take a bit to propagate
Add SSL with LetsEncrypt#
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:certbot/certbot
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install python-certbot-nginx
sudo certbot --nginx -d yourdomain.com -d www.yourdomain.com
# Only valid for 90 days, test the renewal process with
certbot renew --dry-run
You should now be able to visit your domain and see your Node app up and running securely!
Thanks for reading!
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