There are lots of cloud options for deploying node apps. We especially like now, but there are many others. However, there are times when you need to deploy your Node APP on your FileMaker Server. This repo is about that scenario.
Node.js crashes. This is completely and totally normal. It's a feature. I won't get into why here, just know that you will need to have a way to restart the server when it happens.
We are currently using PM2 for this. It has a nice way of configuring the setup. You get a whole range of options, and you can configure multiple node servers in the same file.
PM2 certainly works on Macs, better than on Windows, but most of our FileMaker servers are PCs. So the examples images here are with PCs. It should work just fine on Macs.
To do this, you create a config.js file. and set all your options, for each app. See the example. There are two apps configured there. Each has a path to the start script of the main app, and some Env Vars setup.
We put everthing in one folder. Here we do it an a folder called "node apps" in the C Drive. The config file pm2.config.js sits there along with an "apps" folder and a "temp" folder. "temp" is useful for some apps.
In the "apps" folder you see each of the apps we have configured here.
Open a terminal or shell and navigate to the main folder we setup for our apps. This is the folder that has the pm2.config.js file in it.
Type
pm2 start pm2.config.js
into the terminal and hit enter.
You can close the shell at this point. PM2 will keep the servers running. You can always check on the Servers by typing pm2 ls to see all the running apps. or pm2 logs to get the live logse
pm2 kill will stop everything. See the docs for PM2 for more fine grained controll on stopping and starting apps.
This doc doesn't cover setting up these apps as true windows daemons that start when the server reboots. So you will have to do it manually. This certainly can be done. We just haven't had the need yet.
Please post your questions to the Issues here.
Pull requests welcome.