Node Base Project

This short blog post outlines steps required to setup a basic Node project with Express framework which I will use as a base for future articles. At the completion of this guide, you should be able to query the Node server using Postman on http://<YourIP>:3000/test and receive the following JSON response:

The purpose of this simple Node project is solely to be used as a scaffolding for my blog posts, therefore, it does not include encryption, authentication, and global error handling.

Before you start, you will need:

• A Linux server (I'm using Amazon Linux v2)

• Firewall TCP 3000 and 22 ports open from your PC to the server (unless you are instilling Node on a local PC)

• Internet access

• 15 minutes to spare

Install Node.js

In this step you will install the latest version of Node.js on your Linux Server using NVM.

• Login to Node server's shell using putty or SSH client of your choice.

• Install NVM ( https://github.com/nvm-sh/nvm#installing-and-updating).

curl -o- https://raw.githubusercontent.com/nvm-sh/nvm/v0.37.2/install.sh | bash

• Activate NVM.

. ~/.nvm/nvm.sh

• Install Node version 16.13.0 ( Releases - https://nodejs.org/en/about/releases/)

nvm install 16.13.0

Deploy Base Project

In this step you will download the base project from GitHub and start the application.

• Download project from the Github (if you are familiar with GitHub you can clone it instead "git clone https://github.com/Damian-600/blog-project.git <Folder Name>").

wget https://github.com/Damian-600/blog-project/archive/master.tar.gz

• Extract project files and rename folder

tar -xf master.tar.gz
mv blog-project-master node-project

• Structure of your folder should look like this

• Install project dependencies

npm install

NPM will create new folder node_modules with all dependent packages.

• Audit and update modules

npm audit fix

NPM will check for known vulnerabilities in dependencies included in the package.json file. The fix switch will attempt to remediate found vulnerabilities.

• Start Node project

node server.js

You should see the following output on the screen

Test Node Project

In this section you will query the Node server using Postman.

• Open Postman, set the query method to GET and enter the following URL http://<YourIP>:3000/test, replace <yourIP> with the public IP address of the Node server.

You can download Postman from here.