Nginx works as a front end server, which in this case proxies the requests to a node.js server. Therefore you need to setup an nginx config file for node.
This is what I have done in my Ubuntu box:
Create the file yourdomain.com
at /etc/nginx/sites-available/
:
vim /etc/nginx/sites-available/yourdomain.com
In it you should have something like:
# the IP(s) on which your node server is running. I chose port 3000.
upstream app_yourdomain {
server 127.0.0.1:3000;
keepalive 8;
}
# the nginx server instance
server {
listen 80;
listen [::]:80;
server_name yourdomain.com www.yourdomain.com;
access_log /var/log/nginx/yourdomain.com.log;
# pass the request to the node.js server with the correct headers
# and much more can be added, see nginx config options
location / {
proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr;
proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
proxy_set_header Host $http_host;
proxy_set_header X-NginX-Proxy true;
proxy_pass http://app_yourdomain/;
proxy_redirect off;
}
}
If you want nginx (>= 1.3.13) to handle websocket requests as well, add the following lines in the location /
section:
proxy_http_version 1.1;
proxy_set_header Upgrade $http_upgrade;
proxy_set_header Connection "upgrade";
Once you have this setup you must enable the site defined in the config file above:
cd /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/
ln -s /etc/nginx/sites-available/yourdomain.com yourdomain.com
Create your node server app at /var/www/yourdomain/app.js
and run it at localhost:3000
var http = require('http');
http.createServer(function (req, res) {
res.writeHead(200, {'Content-Type': 'text/plain'});
res.end('Hello World\n');
}).listen(3000, "127.0.0.1");
console.log('Server running at http://127.0.0.1:3000/');
Test for syntax mistakes:
nginx -t
Restart nginx:
sudo /etc/init.d/nginx restart
Lastly start the node server:
cd /var/www/yourdomain/ && node app.js
Now you should see "Hello World" at yourdomain.com
One last note with regards to starting the node server: you should use some kind of monitoring system for the node daemon. There is an awesome tutorial on node with upstart and monit.
You did a great job of summarizing what's awesome about Node.js. My feeling is that Node.js is especially suited for applications where you'd like to maintain a persistent connection from the browser back to the server. Using a technique known as "long-polling", you can write an application that sends updates to the user in real time. Doing long polling on many of the web's giants, like Ruby on Rails or Django, would create immense load on the server, because each active client eats up one server process. This situation amounts to a tarpit attack. When you use something like Node.js, the server has no need of maintaining separate threads for each open connection.
This means you can create a browser-based chat application in Node.js that takes almost no system resources to serve a great many clients. Any time you want to do this sort of long-polling, Node.js is a great option.
It's worth mentioning that Ruby and Python both have tools to do this sort of thing (eventmachine and twisted, respectively), but that Node.js does it exceptionally well, and from the ground up. JavaScript is exceptionally well situated to a callback-based concurrency model, and it excels here. Also, being able to serialize and deserialize with JSON native to both the client and the server is pretty nifty.
I look forward to reading other answers here, this is a fantastic question.
It's worth pointing out that Node.js is also great for situations in which you'll be reusing a lot of code across the client/server gap. The Meteor framework makes this really easy, and a lot of folks are suggesting this might be the future of web development. I can say from experience that it's a whole lot of fun to write code in Meteor, and a big part of this is spending less time thinking about how you're going to restructure your data, so the code that runs in the browser can easily manipulate it and pass it back.
Here's an article on Pyramid and long-polling, which turns out to be very easy to set up with a little help from gevent: TicTacToe and Long Polling with Pyramid.
Best Answer
Express.js is a Node.js framework. It's the most popular framework as of now (the most starred on NPM).
.
It's built around configuration and granular simplicity of Connect middleware. Some people compare Express.js to Ruby Sinatra vs. the bulky and opinionated Ruby on Rails.
That you don't have to repeat same code over and over again. Node.js is a low-level I/O mechanism which has an HTTP module. If you just use an HTTP module, a lot of work like parsing the payload, cookies, storing sessions (in memory or in Redis), selecting the right route pattern based on regular expressions will have to be re-implemented. With Express.js, it is just there for you to use.
The first answer should answer your question. If no, then try to write a small REST API server in plain Node.js (that is, using only core modules) and then in Express.js. The latter will take you 5-10x less time and lines of code.
Redis is a fast persistent key-value storage. You can optionally use it for storing sessions with Express.js, but you don't need to. By default, Express.js has memory storage for sessions. Redis also can be use for queueing jobs, for example, email jobs.
Check out my tutorial on REST API server with Express.js.
Express.js is not an model-view-controller framework by itself. You need to bring your own object-relational mapping libraries such as Mongoose for MongoDB, Sequelize (http://sequelizejs.com) for SQL databases, Waterline (https://github.com/balderdashy/waterline) for many databases into the stack.
Other Node.js frameworks to consider (https://www.quora.com/Node-js/Which-Node-js-framework-is-best-for-building-a-RESTful-API):
UPDATE: I put together this resource that aid people in choosing Node.js frameworks: http://nodeframework.com
UPDATE2: We added some GitHub stats to nodeframework.com so now you can compare the level of social proof (GitHub stars) for 30+ frameworks on one page.
Full-stack:
http://sailsjs.org
http://derbyjs.com/
Just REST API:
Ruby on Rails like:
http://railwayjs.com/
http://geddyjs.org/
Sinatra like:
Other:
http://flatironjs.org/
https://github.com/isaacs/npm-www
http://frisbyjs.com/
Middleware:
Static site generators:
http://docpad.org
https://github.com/jnordberg/wintersmith
http://blacksmith.jit.su/
https://github.com/felixge/node-romulus
https://github.com/caolan/petrify