I have an array of JSON objects which gets updated at server start, however if I change info in the JSON via NodeJS FS (not by doing it myself) Nodemon doesn't restart, so I was wondering if it is possible to restart nodemon via code.
Not sure I fully understand the question, but yes, you can send the nodemon process a SIGHUP signal, e.g.:
pkill -f -SIGHUP nodemon
And you could call this from node.js using child_process.exec. Here is a working example:
const exec = require('child_process').exec;
setTimeout(() => {
console.log('poking nodemon to restart');
exec('pkill -f -SIGHUP nodemon');
}, 2000);
You need to specify the watch list as by default it will monitor only js and coffee files.
You do that by --ext switch or -e
nodemon -e js,json
If you have typescript files too to worry about add them above
I am deploying a Vue client using Vue-cli 3, which uses Webpack
(I can start the client by calling "yarn dev --open")
I am also writing a server with an API for the client
(I can start the server by calling "node server/server.js")
Is there a way to start both the client and the server with one command?
I was thinking that I should add some code to vue.config.js to start the server before the client is being compiled.
Preferably this would all work in a hot-reload way.
So far I tried a shell script as Alex78191 suggested:
#!/usr/bin/env bash
node server/server.js &
yarn dev --open
This works, but when I try to stop the servers using ctrl-C, only the yarn-process stops, but the node server keeps on running.
Is there a way in bash to stop all started processes (background and foreground) with the ctrl-C command?
I was able to get this working with the following bash script:
#!/usr/bin/env bash
node server/server.js &
pid=$!
yarn dev --open
trap "kill ${pid}; exit 1" INT
This script is a little bit more complex than you might expect to make sure that all child processes stop when this script stops (using ctrl-C). For more information on stopping child processes I found some help here: how-can-bash-script-do-the-equivalent-of-ctrl-c-to-a-background-task
I am currently programming Node.js with Express.js, and every time I change a line of code in the file router or app, I need to type the command:
pm2 reload id_project.
How do I make pm2 auto-reload the project when a file is changed?
You need to start your pm2 project with the --watch option:
pm2 start <script|name|id> --watch
Where <script|name|id> refers to:
script the path to the script you want to let pm2 handle
name the name of the configuration in the "ecosystem" file
id refers to an already running application using pm2, which can be obtained using pm2 list (note that this would actually require a restart instead of start, so it's probably the least desirable of the options)
You could also specify which files/directories to ignore:
pm2 start <script> --watch --ignore-watch "node_modules"
Watch & Restart
Or create an "ecosystem" json file describing how you want pm2 to treat your project:
{
"name": "project_name",
"script": "index.js",
"watch": true,
"ignore_watch": ["node_modules"]
}
JSON options
PM2 comes with a handy development tool that allow you to start an application and restart it on file change:
# Start your application in development mode
# it print the logs and restart on file change too
# Two way of running your application :
pm2-dev start my-app.js
# or
pm2-dev my-app.js
By default, pm2 doesn’t automatically refresh our server every time we change files.
You need to start your pm2 project with the --watch cli argument in order to tell pm2 to refresh when files have changed:
pm2 start id_project --watch
check out the docs for more details, or #rogier-spieker answer which is more detailed.
pm2 is a Node process manager that has lots of bells and whistles. you can run the below command to automatically restarting the node application when file changes in the directory are detected.
pm2 start index.js --watch
Note that because pm2 runs things in the background, you can’t just ctrl+c your way out of a running pm2 process. You have to stop it by passing the ID or the name.
pm2 stop 0
pm2 stop index
other two options are below
npx supervisor index.js
nodemon index.js
I tried express-livereload, but it just reloaded view files.
Should I use another tool, or this one can be configured to watch for my index.js file which runs the server?
I read that options are the same as node-livereload, and default for watched files include .js files.
Any URL you know with a simple configuration?
My main problem is how to setup good development environment for Express.js, and I would like to inspect the variables when I am making a request, is painful to restart each time I make a change in a route.
PS I tried node-inspector to inspect variables when server handles a request, but it seems node-inspector is not intended for that, right?
I think Nodemon has what you're looking for.
Nodemon is a utility that will monitor for any changes in your source and automatically restart your server. Perfect for development.
Example invocation:
nodemon index.js
I use express.js, normally start server by
npm start
with Nodemon installed, I use
nodemon --exec npm start
Note: nodemon app.js will NOT work here,
because express.js use start script
To install nodemon
npm install -g nodemon
You can livereload both front and backend changes to the browser using 'livereload', 'connect-livereload', and 'nodemon'. Also, this way you don't need Gulp or Grunt. Here's how they work together:
livereload opens a high port and notifies the browser of any changed file
connect-livereload monkey patches every served HTML page with a JavaScript snippet that connects to this high port
nodemon restarts the server on any changed backend file
Set up livereload in Express
Set up Express to both start livereload server watching the public directory and ping the browser during nodemon-induced restart:
const livereload = require("livereload");
const connectLivereload = require("connect-livereload");
// open livereload high port and start to watch public directory for changes
const liveReloadServer = livereload.createServer();
liveReloadServer.watch(path.join(__dirname, 'public'));
// ping browser on Express boot, once browser has reconnected and handshaken
liveReloadServer.server.once("connection", () => {
setTimeout(() => {
liveReloadServer.refresh("/");
}, 100);
});
const app = express();
// monkey patch every served HTML so they know of changes
app.use(connectLivereload());
Start Express with Nodemon
Start the server with nodemon, for example, with a dedicated watch script by running npm run watch.
The key point here is to ignore the public directory that's already being watched by livereload. You can also configure files with non-default extensions, like pug and mustache, to be watched.
"scripts": {
"start": "node ./bin/www",
"watch": "nodemon --ext js,pug --ignore public"
},
You can read a longer explanation in "Refresh front and backend changes to browser with Express, LiveReload and Nodemon."
It might interest you to know that since the release of Node.js V18, Node.js can automatically restart a server upon making a change to the index.js file.
To use the feature, run the server with the following command:
node --watch index.js
Note: At the time of writing, the feature is still experimental.
I would like to use nodemon from within the WebStorm IDE (version 7). Nodemon watches one or more files in my source folder and restarts the node process (an Express server in this case), when one of the source files changes.
How do I configure WebStorm to use nodemon in a Run Configuration, so that the node process is automatically restarted?
Without nodemon, I use the following configuration in WebStorm, but have to restart the node process whenever I change something in the source file:
Node interpreter: /usr/local/bin/node
Working directory: /Users/foo/test
JavaScript file: server.js
This results in a Run Configuration that runs node server.js in the specified directory.
From command line, I can use the following command to use nodemon to watch for file changes: nodemon server.js in the project directory.
How do I need to change the WebStorm configuration so that it also uses nodemon?
It looks like the workaround with --exec isn't necessary anymore, at least when using the newest version of nodemon and Webstorm 7 or 8.
All you have to do is specify your path to nodemon by obtaining its path with running which nodemon in your console (e.g. /usr/local/bin/nodemon) under "Node parameters":
#Bela Clark, thanks for confirming.
You may NOT have nodemon exists from which nodemon command, then you should have it in your package.json ie nodemon be installed at :project_dir/node_modules/.bin/nodemon
Then from Webstorm 's run/debug config, set Node parameters to be
:path_to_project_dir/node_modules/.bin/nodemon
You should save the debug/run config to file so your teammates can also easily debug/run your nodejs app like you
This will save the config into some .xml file, sample as below
<component name="ProjectRunConfigurationManager">
<configuration default="false" name="index.js" type="NodeJSConfigurationType" path-to-node="$USER_HOME$/.nvm/versions/node/v19.4.0/bin/node" nameIsGenerated="true" node-parameters="../node_modules/.bin/nodemon" path-to-js-file="index.js" working-dir="$PROJECT_DIR$/nodejs27/node27_sequelize_apiapp/src">
<method v="2" />
</configuration>
</component>
This is the Windows solution
You can just use the nodemon.cmd instead of node directly like :
Node interpreter : C:\MyPath\To\nodemon.cmd
Node parameters : /*Empty for me*/
Node WorkingDirectoy : C:\Users\MyUserName\Desktop\DirectoryContainingMyIndex.js
JavaScriptFile : app\index.js /*or just index.js depending on your config*/
and then :
Hope it will help you.
To install nodemon, use the following (if required, use sudo to run the installation with root privileges:
npm install -g nodemon
This will install nodemon globally on your machine.
Then, in your WebStorm Run Configuration, add the following, leaving everything else unchanged:
Node parameters: /usr/local/bin/nodemon --exec /usr/local/bin/node
This will instruct the node interpreter to execute the nodemon script using the following command line: node /usr/local/bin/nodemon --exec /usr/local/bin/node server.js.
The --exec part is important, as the execution will fail with the following error:
/usr/local/bin/node /usr/local/bin/nodemon server.js
4 Oct 13:56:50 - [nodemon] v0.7.10
4 Oct 13:56:50 - [nodemon] to restart at any time, enter `rs`
4 Oct 13:56:50 - [nodemon] watching: /Users/foo/test
execvp(): No such file or directory
4 Oct 13:56:50 - [nodemon] starting `node server.js`
4 Oct 13:56:50 - [nodemon] exception in nodemon killing node
Error: spawn ENOENT
at errnoException (child_process.js:980:11)
at Process.ChildProcess._handle.onexit (child_process.js:771:34)
The error seems to be caused by WebStorm not seeing the node executable on its path.
The fix for this is to specify the location to the node executable using the --exec /usr/local/bin/node parameter.
Using these settings, nodemon works fine when run from a WebStorm Run Configuration.
The same trick might have to be used with some of the tools similar to nodemon, e.g. node-supervisor.
I'm on Windows and for me didn't worked with nodemon (no idea why), but someone from Jetbrains suggested to try with supervisor:
I installed supervisor: npm install supervisor -g
Then find where is supervisor installed, for me was in:
C:\Users\AlinC\AppData\Roaming\npm\node_modules\supervisor\lib\cli-wrapper.js –no-restart-on error
I went back to Intellij: edit configurations -> node parameters -> and added:
C:\Users\AlinC\AppData\Roaming\npm\node_modules\supervisor\lib\cli-wrapper.js –no-restart-on error
For those interested for the solution in Windows 10, here is my configuration. It does not show "Terminate Batch" thing and works perfectly.
You press debug ONCE and than you can save change files whatever and the server will restart in debug mode. All brakepoints are working perfectly
For windows users set:
Node Interpreter: Path of the node.exe i.e. c:\program files\node\node.exe
Node parameter: C:\Users\YOURUSER\AppData\Roaming\npm\node_modules\nodemon\bin\nodemon.js
You can also make it work with nvm and debugging still works.
Tested with Node.js 8.1.0 and Webstorm 2017.2
First make sure you are on the right version (in my case v8.1.0) and install nodemon globally -
nvm use v8.1.0
npm install -g nodemon
Then, open Run/Debug configurations and create a new one with the correct node interpreter.
Node parameters should be:
MAC
/Users/[YOUR_USER]/.nvm/versions/node/v8.1.0/bin/nodemon --inspect=3001
LINUX
/usr/local/nvm/versions/node/v8.1.0/bin/nodemon --inspect=3001
Save and debug respponsibally :)
In case you've installed nodemon like a global library, just set in node parameters:
C:\Users\${yourUser}\AppData\Roaming\npm\node_modules\nodemon\bin\nodemon.js
This is the only thing that worked for me:
Add a new package.json node run script command:
Create an NPM CONFIG (not a node config)
Select "start-watch" as the command
For me this worked for debugging / breakpoints without issues or additional headache.
Here's the configuration that works for me on Windows 7 + WebStorm 8.0.4. If I put nodemon.cmd as the node interpreter I kept getting "Terminate batch job (Y/N)?".
Do a npm install nodmemon -g
Only change the Path to Node to the nodemon.cmd, in my case (C:\Users\Rohit Taneja\AppData\Roaming\npm\nodemon.cmd), you'll also get this path after your installion of nodemon finishes.
You're good to go
some of these answers appear to only work for Mac. For Windows, this configuration seems to work (my user name on Windows 7 is denman).
main.js is the starting point file for my Express application.
Just add new script to package.json called nodemon (or choose your own name)
"scripts": {
...
"nodemon": "nodemon ./bin/www"
}
Then go to Run/Debug Configuration and add npm configuration. Set
Command to "run"
Script to "nodemon" (name you chose in package.json)
I have a development in mac and as OdkoPP indicates I made it work
"scripts": {
"build": "tsc",
"dev": "nodemon src/index.ts --exec ts-node"
},
Run/Debug Configurations npm:
Per #bernhardw comment, as this was the answer for me -
All is needed is /usr/local/bin/nodemon under node parameters
Works for run and debug as it restarts upon changes, but debugging with breakpoint does not work.
Bonus: add -e for more extension e.g /usr/local/bin/nodemon -e js,html,jade
(osx 10.10.5, rubymine 7.1.4)
HTH
npm install -g nodemon
1* goto run->Edit Configurations->Press'+' at left corner and choose Node.js
2* Select Node.js and Press '+'
3* Name as Nodemon, add path in javaScript file: C:\Users\Your_User_Name\AppData\Roaming\npm\node_modules\nodemon\bin\nodemon.js
4* Click Apply and Ok
5* Run the Nodemon
Script in package.json: "start": "nodemon --inspect -r babel-register src",
First pic: Run debug and it will start
Second pic: attaching to existing running node
Here is a fix for an error I was getting...
If you are using a Windows + NodeJS + nodemon.
With an IntelliJ - Run Configuration.
ERROR: starting inspector on failed: address already in use
When I use nodemon version 1.19.1, I get the error.
When I use nodemon version 1.18.11, it works!
Good luck...
This is how I am running
Installed nodemon package
npm install -g nodemon # OR using yarn: yarn global add nodemon
From Webstorm terminal, run
nodemon index.js
This is how it will show running in terminal