Environment

This is running on Ubuntu 13.10

Here I would like to use Sails.js framework (version 0.9.13) to create node.js app.

1. Install node.js on Ubuntu

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$ sudo apt-get install python-software-properties python g++ make
$ sudo add-apt-repository ppa:chris-lea/node.js
$ sudo apt-get update
$ sudo apt-get install nodejs

2. Create 2 apps

Install Sails.js globally

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$ sudo npm -g install sails

Create projects

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$ cd
$ mkdir public_html && cd public_html
$ sails new project1
$ sails new project2

Edit the home page for both projects (to differentiate them)

project1/views/home/index.ejs

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<h1>This is project 1</h1>

project2/views/home/index.ejs

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<h1>This is second project</h1>

3. Change the environment to production

project1/config/local.js

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module.exports = {
    port: 8081, // change the port to 8081
    environment: 'production'
};

project2/config/local.js

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module.exports = {
    port: 8082, // change the port to 8082
    environment: 'production'
};

In order to make the app run on background, we need forever

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$ sudo npm install -g forever

Now start the app using forever

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$ cd ~/public_html/project1
$ forever start app.js
warn:    --minUptime not set. Defaulting to: 1000ms
warn:    --spinSleepTime not set. Your script will exit if it does not stay up for at least 1000ms
info:    Forever processing file: app.js

Let’s open up your browser, and type localhost:8081… Oops… it doesn’t work like expected

Let’s check the log

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$ forever logs
info:    Logs for running Forever processes
data:        script logfile                    
data:    [0] app.js /home/username/.forever/1Vak.log

See the content of the file

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$ less ~/.forever/1Vak.log

module.js:340
    throw err;
          ^
Error: Cannot find module 'sails'
    at Function.Module._resolveFilename (module.js:338:15)
    at Function.Module._load (module.js:280:25)
    at Module.require (module.js:364:17)
    at require (module.js:380:17)
    at Object.<anonymous> (/home/js/public_html/sails2/app.js:2:1)
    at Module._compile (module.js:456:26)
    at Object.Module._extensions..js (module.js:474:10)
    at Module.load (module.js:356:32)
    at Function.Module._load (module.js:312:12)
    at Function.Module.runMain (module.js:497:10)
error: Forever detected script exited with code: 8

Now, the error tell us that we need to install Sails.js locally

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$ forever stopall # stop all process
$ cd ~/public_html/project1
$ sudo npm install sails # without -g option

Repeat the same thing on project2

Now open up the browser, it should show up the content.

4. Bind different domain name to different project

First, we need Nginx

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$ sudo apt-get install nginx

Configure Nginx to listen to port 80 and forword the request to different app based by the port number

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$ cd /etc/nginx/sites-available/
$ sudo touch sails1.com.conf

Put the content to sails1.com.conf

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server {
  listen 80;

  server_name sails1.com;

  location / {
      proxy_pass http://localhost:8081;
      proxy_http_version 1.1;
      proxy_set_header Upgrade $http_upgrade;
      proxy_set_header Connection 'upgrade';
      proxy_set_header Host $host;
      proxy_cache_bypass $http_upgrade;
  }
}

This tell the server that forword the request from sails1.com to http://localhost:8081 (which is the project1)

Just do the same thing for project2

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server {
  listen 80;

  server_name sails2.com;

  location / {
      proxy_pass http://localhost:8082;
      proxy_http_version 1.1;
      proxy_set_header Upgrade $http_upgrade;
      proxy_set_header Connection 'upgrade';
      proxy_set_header Host $host;
      proxy_cache_bypass $http_upgrade;
  }
}

Enable the config. (In order to make the config file take effect, symlink them to sites-enabled directory)

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$ sudo ln -s /etc/nginx/sites-available/sails1.com.conf /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/sails1.com.conf
$ sudo ln -s /etc/nginx/sites-available/sails2.com.conf /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/sails2.com.conf

Restart Nginx server

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$ sudo service nginx restart

Since I’m testing on local machine, so we need to edit the hosts file, append the content below the hosts file

/etc/hosts

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# nginx virtual host
127.0.0.1    sails1.com
127.0.0.1    sails2.com

5. Done

Basically what we do here is Reverse proxy, Nginx listen to the port 80 and passing the request to different app.

References: