Prerequisites
Before going forward, make sure you have the following prerequisites:- A server with root access
- A domain name or IP address
- A web server that can be used to serve static files
- Nginx installed and configured on the machine
- SSL configured for the domain name or IP address
Create a Small Express App
We will create a small express app to test the deployment. Here are the steps:1
Install nodejs and npm on ubuntu
2
Create a project dir and initialize a node app
3
Install basic dependencies
4
Update the package.json
5
Create an index.js file and add the following code
6
Install pm2 to run this dummy app in the background
7
Run the application with the following command
8080.Do a reverse proxy with nginx
Nginx can also act as a reverse proxy, forwarding client requests to other servers. Here are the steps to configure Nginx as a reverse proxy:1
Edit your server block configuration
2
Configure the server block to act as a reverse proxy
3
Test and reload Nginx
4
Verify the configuration
Now, when you request
http://<server_ip>/api it will return the following response:Summary
In this guide, we learned how to deploy a Node API with Nginx on Ubuntu server. We also learned how to configure Nginx as a reverse proxy.Next: Setting Up PostgreSQL with Docker
Continue your journey by learning how to set up PostgreSQL using Docker containers.

