Getting Started with Node.js on The Cloud

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In my new job at salesforce.com I’m incredibly exited about getting into Heroku, a Platform as a Service provider / Cloud Application Platform. In a future blog post I’ll provide more details on what Heroku is and how it works. But if you are like me the first thing you want to do when learning a new technology is to take it for a test drive. I decided to take my Heroku test drive using the recently announced Node.js support. I’m new to Node.js, but at least I know JavaScript. Heroku also offers Ruby / Rails support but I don’t know Ruby - yet. So let me walk you through the steps I took (and that you can follow) to get started with Node.js on the Heroku Cloud.

Step 1) Sign up for Heroku

Step 2) Install the Heroku command line client

Step 3) Login to Heroku via the command line:

heroku auth:login

Step 4) Install git

Step 5) Install Node.js

Step 6) Create a Node.js app

I started by building a very simple “hello, world” Node.js app. In a new project directory I created two new files. First is the package.json file which specifies the app metadata and dependencies:

{
  "name": "hellonode",
  "version": "0.0.1",
  "dependencies": {
    "express": "2.5.11"
  },
  "engines": {
    "node": "0.8.4",
    "npm": "1.1.45"
  }
}

Then the actual app itself contained in a file named web.js:

var express = require('express');
 
var app = express.createServer(express.logger());
 
app.get('/', function(request, response) {
  response.send('hello, world');
});
 
var port = process.env.PORT || 3000;
console.log("Listening on " + port);
 
app.listen(port);

This app simply maps requests to “/” to a function that sends a simple string back in the response. You will notice that the port to listen on will first try to see if it has been specified through an environment variable and then fallback to port 3000. This is important because Heroku can tell our app to run on a different port just by giving it an environment variable.

Step 7) Install the app dependencies with npm:

npm install .

This uses the package.json file to figure out what dependencies the app needs and then copies them into a “node_modules” directory.

Step 8) Try to run the app locally:

node web.js

You should see “Listening on 3000” to indicate that the Node.js app is running! Try to open it in your browser:

http://localhost:3000/

Hopefully you will see “hello, world”.

Step 9) Heroku uses a “Procfile” to determine how to actually run your app. Here I will just use a Procfile to tell Heroku what to run in the “web” process. But the Procfile is really the foundation for telling Heroku how to run your stuff. I won’t go into detail here since Adam Wiggins has done a great blog post about the purpose and use of a Procfile. Create a file named “Procfile” in the project directory with the following contents:

web: node web.js

This will instruct Heroku to run the web app using the node command and the web.js file as the main app. Heroku can also run workers (non-web apps) but for now we will just deal with web processes.

Step 10) In order to send the app to Heroku the files must be in a local git repository. To create the local git repo, run the following inside of your project directory:

git init

Now add the three files you’ve created to the git repo:

git add package.json Procfile web.js

Note: Make sure you don’t add the node_modules directory to the git repo! You can have git ignore it by creating a .gitignore file containing just “node_modules”.

Commit the files to the local repo:

git commit -m "initial commit"

Step 11) Create an app on Heroku:

heroku create

A default / random app name is automatically assigned to your app.

Step 12) Now you can push your app to Heroku! Just run:

git push heroku master

You should see something like:

Counting objects: 8, done.
Delta compression using up to 4 threads.
Compressing objects: 100% (6/6), done.
Writing objects: 100% (6/6), 729 bytes, done.
Total 6 (delta 2), reused 0 (delta 0)

-----> Heroku receiving push
-----> Node.js app detected
-----> Resolving engine versions
       Using Node.js version: 0.8.4
       Using npm version: 1.1.41
-----> Fetching Node.js binaries
-----> Vendoring node into slug
-----> Installing dependencies with npm
       npm WARN package.json hellonode@0.0.1 No README.md file found!
       npm http GET https://registry.npmjs.org/express/2.5.11
       npm http 200 https://registry.npmjs.org/express/2.5.11
       npm http GET https://registry.npmjs.org/express/-/express-2.5.11.tgz
       npm http 200 https://registry.npmjs.org/express/-/express-2.5.11.tgz
       npm http GET https://registry.npmjs.org/connect
       npm http GET https://registry.npmjs.org/mime/1.2.4
       npm http GET https://registry.npmjs.org/qs
       npm http GET https://registry.npmjs.org/mkdirp/0.3.0
       npm http 200 https://registry.npmjs.org/qs
       npm http 200 https://registry.npmjs.org/mkdirp/0.3.0
       npm http 200 https://registry.npmjs.org/mime/1.2.4
       npm http 200 https://registry.npmjs.org/connect
       npm http GET https://registry.npmjs.org/qs/-/qs-0.4.2.tgz
       npm http GET https://registry.npmjs.org/connect/-/connect-1.9.2.tgz
       npm http GET https://registry.npmjs.org/mkdirp/-/mkdirp-0.3.0.tgz
       npm http GET https://registry.npmjs.org/mime/-/mime-1.2.4.tgz
       npm http 200 https://registry.npmjs.org/qs/-/qs-0.4.2.tgz
       npm http 200 https://registry.npmjs.org/mime/-/mime-1.2.4.tgz
       npm http 200 https://registry.npmjs.org/connect/-/connect-1.9.2.tgz
       npm http 200 https://registry.npmjs.org/mkdirp/-/mkdirp-0.3.0.tgz
       npm WARN package.json connect@1.9.2 No README.md file found!
       npm http GET https://registry.npmjs.org/formidable
       npm http 200 https://registry.npmjs.org/formidable
       npm http GET https://registry.npmjs.org/formidable/-/formidable-1.0.11.tgz
       npm http 200 https://registry.npmjs.org/formidable/-/formidable-1.0.11.tgz
       express@2.5.11 node_modules/express
       ├── qs@0.4.2
       ├── mime@1.2.4
       ├── mkdirp@0.3.0
       └── connect@1.9.2 (formidable@1.0.11)
       npm WARN package.json hellonode@0.0.1 No README.md file found!
       npm WARN package.json connect@1.9.2 No README.md file found!
       express@2.5.11 /tmp/build_h2gd35fmkgzm/node_modules/express
       connect@1.9.2 /tmp/build_h2gd35fmkgzm/node_modules/express/node_modules/connect
       qs@0.4.2 /tmp/build_h2gd35fmkgzm/node_modules/express/node_modules/qs
       mime@1.2.4 /tmp/build_h2gd35fmkgzm/node_modules/express/node_modules/mime
       formidable@1.0.11 /tmp/build_h2gd35fmkgzm/node_modules/express/node_modules/connect/node_modules/formidable
       mkdirp@0.3.0 /tmp/build_h2gd35fmkgzm/node_modules/express/node_modules/mkdirp
       Dependencies installed
-----> Discovering process types
       Procfile declares types -> web
-----> Compiled slug size is 4.0MB
-----> Launching... done, v5
       http://fast-plateau-8288.herokuapp.com deployed to Heroku

To git@heroku.com:fast-plateau-8288.git
   26b4efc..6e333a2  master -> master

Now you should be able to connect to your app in the browser! An easy way to open the app in your browser is to run:

heroku open

To see your app logs (provisioning, management, scaling, and system out messages) run:

heroku logs

To see your app processes run:

heroku ps

And best of all, if you want to add more Dynos* just run:

heroku scale web=2
  • Dynos are the isolated containers that run your web and other processes. They are managed by the Heroku Dyno Manifold. Learn more about Dynos.

That increases the number of Dynos running the app from one to two. Automatically Heroku will distribute the load across those two Dynos, detect dead Dynos, restart them, etc! That is seriously easy app scalability!

There is much more to Heroku and I’ll be continuing to write about it here. But in the meantime, check out all of the great docs in the Heroku Dev Center. And please let me know if you have any questions or problems. Thanks!