NubesGen Documentation

# Using Node.js with NubesGen

This documentation is for running Node.js applications with NubesGen, and there is another option that might interest you:

NubesGen supports creating Azure App Service instances and Azure Functions instances, depending on the type of Node.js application that you wish to deploy.

# Tutorial: running a Node.js application with NubesGen

Prerequisites:

Tip: You can go to https://aka.ms/nubesgen-azure-shell (opens new window) to have those prerequisites installed, and run the script from a Web browser.

Steps:

  1. Create a sample Node.js Web application using NestJs (opens new window). We'll follow the beginning of the NestJs "first steps" guide (opens new window):
    npm i -g @nestjs/cli
nest new nodejs-sample-app
cd nodejs-sample-app
    Select the default package manager (npm). In the project, open the src/main.ts file, and use the $PORT environment variable to bind your application to the correct port:
    await app.listen(process.env.PORT || 3000);
    Open package.json file, and add the files entry to tell NPM how to package your app:
    "files": [
   "dist"
]
  2. Create a project on GitHub called nodejs-sample-app, and push the generated project to that repository. Change <your-github-account> by the name of your GitHub account:
    git init
git add .
git commit -m "first commit"
git remote add origin https://github.com/<your-github-account>/nodejs-sample-app.git
git branch -M main
git push -u origin main
  3. In the cloned project (cd nodejs-sample-app), set up GitOps with NubesGen by running the NubesGen CLI (more information here):
     ./nubesgen-cli-linux gitops
  4. Use the command-line with NubesGen (more information here) to generate a NubesGen configuration:
    curl "https://nubesgen.com/demo.tgz?runtime=nodejs&application=app_service.standard&gitops=true" | tar -xzvf -
  5. Create a new branch called env-dev, and push your code:
    git checkout -b env-dev
git add .
git commit -m 'Configure GitOps with NubesGen'
git push --set-upstream origin env-dev
  6. Go to your GitHub project, and check that the GitHub Action is running.
  7. You can go to the Azure Portal (opens new window) to check the created resources.
  8. The application should be deployed on your App Service instance. Its URL should be in the form https://app-demo-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-dev-001.azurewebsites.net/, and you can also find it in the GitHub Action workflow (Job: "display-information", step "Display Azure infrastructure information"), or in the Azure portal. As it is a simple application, it should print by default Hello, world.
  9. Once you have finished, you should clean up your resources:
  10. Delete the resource group that was created by NubesGen to host your resources, which is named rg-demo-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-001.
  11. Delete the storage account used to store your Terraform state, in the rg-terraform-001 resource group.

# Which Azure resources are created

If you deploy your Node.js application to an Azure App Service instance, NubesGen will generate:

If you deploy your Node.js application to an Azure Function, NubesGen will generate:

# Configuration options

In the generated terraform/modules/app-service/main.tf file, NubesGen will configure some variables for your application.

# The app_command_line parameter

In the site_config block, NubesGen generates the following configuration:

app_command_line = "npm run start:prod"

This command is the one used to run the Node.js application. By default, this command is npm run start:prod, which is the default with NestJS (opens new window), but this should be specifically configured depending on the framework used.

# The PORT environment variable

Azure App Service automatically assigns the PORT variable, so your Node.js application can listen to the correct port.

You need to configure it in your application:

app.listen(process.env.PORT || 3000);

# Other options

NubesGen will configure some environment variables for your application.

  • DATABASE_URL: the URL to your database
  • DATABASE_USERNAME: the database user name
  • DATABASE_PASSWORD: the database password
  • REDIS_HOST: the Redis host name
  • REDIS_PASSWORD: the Redis password
  • REDIS_PORT: the Redis port (by default 6380)
  • AZURE_STORAGE_ACCOUNT_NAME: the storage account name
  • AZURE_STORAGE_ACCOUNT_KEY: the storage account key
  • AZURE_STORAGE_BLOB_ENDPOINT: the blob storage endpoint
  • MONGODB_DATABASE: the MongoDB database name
  • MONGODB_URI: the MongoDB database URL

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