Sample Node.js Application on Cloud Foundry AMI

My post on a Cloud Foundry AMI was with a simple Ruby application. In a comment Andrew Spyker asked about a node.js application. I’ve done Javascript but not node.js, so thought I’d give it a try. I followed my earlier instructions to get the CF Micro instance started and then starting with the ‘Use the Server’ I did something different.

Using the webserver example here, I created two files in a new directory. The first file, example.js, contained the following:

var http = require('http');
var port = parseInt(process.env.PORT,10);
http.createServer(function (req, res) {
  res.writeHead(200, {'Content-Type': 'text/plain'});
  res.end('Hello World\n');
}).listen(port, '0.0.0.0');
console.log('Server running at http://0.0.0.0:' + port.toString() + '/');

The second file, package.json, contained the following:

{
  "name": "http-server",
  "version": "0.0.1",
  "author": "James Foster <github@jgfoster.net>",
  "description": "webserver demo from http://nodejs.org/",
  "dependencies" : [ ],
  "engines": {
    "node": ">=0.10"
  }
}

(Bear in mind that this is my first node.js application, and I just spent a hour or so poking around on the web to get this far.)

From the command line I’m able to run it by entering the following:

export PORT=1337; node example.js

With this I can open a web browser on http://localhost:1337/ and see the greeting.

To push my trivial application to my EC2 instance, I did the following:

cf target http://api.<my-ip>.xip.io
cf login --password mySecret admin
# okay to ignore CFoundry::InvalidRelation error in next command
# (see https://github.com/cloudfoundry/cf/issues/9)
cf create-space development 
cf target --space development
cf map-domain --space development <my-ip>.xip.io
cf push --command "node example.js"

The interaction included giving the application a name (“hello”), accepting the defaults, and saving the configuration:

Name> hello

Instances> 1

1: 128M
2: 256M
3: 512M
4: 1G
Memory Limit> 256M

Creating hello... OK

1: hello
2: none
Subdomain> hello

1: 54.200.62.218.xip.io
2: none
Domain> 54.200.62.218.xip.io

Binding hello.54.200.62.218.xip.io to hello... OK

Create services for application?> n

Save configuration?> y

Saving to manifest.yml... OK
Uploading hello... OK
Preparing to start hello... OK
-----> Downloaded app package (4.0K)
-----> Resolving engine versions
 Using Node.js version: 0.10.17
 Using npm version: 1.2.30
-----> Fetching Node.js binaries
-----> Vendoring node into slug
-----> Installing dependencies with npm
 npm WARN package.json http-server@0.0.1 No repository field.
 npm WARN package.json http-server@0.0.1 No readme data.
 npm WARN package.json http-server@0.0.1 No repository field.
 npm WARN package.json http-server@0.0.1 No readme data.
 Dependencies installed
-----> Building runtime environment
-----> Uploading droplet (15M)
Checking status of app 'hello'...
 0 of 1 instances running (1 starting)
 0 of 1 instances running (1 starting)
 1 of 1 instances running (1 running)
Push successful! App 'hello' available at http://hello.54.200.62.218.xip.io

When I went to the URL provided, I saw the greeting.