Running your NodeJs app as a service

You spent some time making your node app and now you need to deploy locally, or on a server. How to keep track of your app status ?

The best known solution is the systemd, the UNIX default service manager.

Node Application:

In this app we will be using express, so if you want follow the node app, please run:

npm install express --save

Let’s create our node app first:

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

app.get('/', function (req, res) {
  res.send('Node Js App!');
});

app.listen(3000, function () {
  console.log('Example app listening on port 3000!');
});

Now just run your node app and open the url: localhost:3000 in your browser.

Unix Service:

First create a file named your-node-app.service inside /etc/systemd/system/, then copy the text below to your file:

Run systemctl daemon-reload to reload the service files. Then use systemctl start your-node-app

You can run too systemctl status your-node-app to check your application status.

And is done, your app is running as a unix service.