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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

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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

sudo apt install nodejs
sudo apt install npm
2

Create a project dir and initialize a node app

mkdir express-app
cd express-app
npm init -y
3

Install basic dependencies

npm install express nodemon
4

Update the package.json

{
  "name": "express-app",
  "version": "1.0.0",
  "description": "",
  "main": "index.js",
  "type": "module",
  "scripts": {
    "dev": "nodemon index.js"
  },
  "keywords": [],
  "author": "",
  "license": "ISC",
  "dependencies": {
    "express": "^4.19.2",
    "nodemon": "^3.1.4"
  }
}
5

Create an index.js file and add the following code

touch index.js

import express from "express";
const app = express();
app.get("/api", (req, res) => {
  return res.status(200).json({
    message: "server working",
  });
});
app.listen(8080, () => console.log("Server is running on 8080"));
6

Install pm2 to run this dummy app in the background

npm install -g pm2 # if npm is not available use sudo npm install -g pm2
7

Run the application with the following command

pm2 start "npm run dev"
This will start the application on port 8080.

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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

sudo vim /etc/nginx/sites-available/default
2

Configure the server block to act as a reverse proxy

server {
  listen 80;  # Listen on port 80 for incoming HTTP requests
  server_name localhost;  # Server name or domain name this block will respond to

  location / {
    proxy_pass http://127.0.0.1:8080;  # Proxy requests to the backend server running on localhost:8080
    proxy_set_header Host $host;  # Set the Host header to the client's original host
    proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr;  # Set the X-Real-IP header to the client's IP address
    proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;  # Append client's IP addresses to X-Forwarded-For header
    proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-Proto $scheme;  # Set the X-Forwarded-Proto header to the client's protocol (http or https)
  }
}
3

Test and reload Nginx

sudo nginx -t
sudo systemctl reload nginx
4

Verify the configuration

Now, when you request http://<server_ip>/api it will return the following response:
{ "message": "server working" }

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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.

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