puppet-nodeapp

This is a puppet module for configuring a NodeJS application. It does the following:

• Creates a service for the node application
• Creates a service that watches for changes and restarts the app as necessary
• Configures logging (from stdout and stderr)

Only supports Ubuntu, and whatever else uses upstart for its service configuration.

Dependencies

This module depends on the Upstart module. You'll need to download it manually since it's not on the Puppet Forge.

Usage

nodeapp::instance { 'my-sweet-node-app':
	# required: the script to run to start your application
	entry_point => '/path/to/app.js',

	# optional: the directory to store the logs
	# note that you are responsible for making sure this directory exists
	log_dir => '/path/to/logs',

	# optional: if set, this will run "npm install ${npm_install_dir} --unsafe-perm"
	npm_install_dir => '/path/to/app',

	# optional: defaults to $name
	app_name => 'my-sweet-node-app',

	# optional: sets the NODE_PATH environment variable
	node_path => '/path/to/node/stuff:/another/one',

	# optional: sets the TZ environment variable
	# use Europe/London for UTC
	# defaults to local time
	time_zone => 'Europe/London',

	# optional: if given, will set up a watch service that detects changes
	# to the app and restarts the service automatically
	watch_config_file => '/path/to/watcher-config.js'.

	# optional: arguments to pass to npm install command;
	# only relevant if npm_install_dir is set
	# defaults to "--unsafe-perm"
	npm_install_args => '--unsafe-perm',

	# specify a user/group for the upstart job
	user => undef,
	group => undef,

	# whether to redirect console output to the log file
	redirect_logs => true,
}

When this runs, it will create the following services:

• my-sweet-node-app
• my-sweet-node-app_watcher

These can be statused/restarted/stopped using the service commands, e.g. sudo restart my-sweet-node-app.

The logs for the watch service will be in $log_dir/my-sweet-node-app_watcher.log.

Setting up the watch service

The watcher app uses Gargoyle to handle file and directory monitoring. See the documentation over there for possible values for the options object.

The watch service requires a configuration file. It should look something like this:

var path = require('path');

module.exports = {
	locations: [
		{
			dir: '/path/to/code/to/watch',

			// see Gargoyle documentation for more info on these options
			options: {
				type: 'watch',
				exclude: function(filename, stat) {
					var basename = path.basename(filename);
					if (basename.charAt(0) === '.') {
						return true;
					}

					return false;
				}
			}
		},

		//etc.
	],

	services: [
		'my-sweet-node-app'
	]
};