Apache and Node js on the Same Server

Question

I want to use Node because it s swift  uses the same language I am using on the client side  and it s non-blocking by definition   But the guy who I hired to write the program for file handling  saving  editing  renaming  downloading  uploading files  etc    he wants to use apache   So  I must    Convince him to use Node  he s giving up little ground on that  Figure out how to upload  download  rename  save  etc  files in node or I must install apache and node on the same server    Which is the most favorable situation  and how do I implement that

User · Answer

I am assuming that you are making a web app because you refer to Apache and Node. Quick answer - Is it possible - YES. Is it recommended - NO. Node bundles it's own webserver and most websites run on port 80. I am also assuming that there is currently no Apache plugin which is supported by Nodejs and I am not sure if creating a virtual host is the best way to implement this. These are the questions that should be answered by developers who maintain Nodejs like the good folks at Joyent.

Instead of ports, it would be better to evaluate Node's tech stack which is completely different from most others and which is why I love it but it also involves a few compromises that you should be aware of in advance.

Your example looks similar to a CMS or a sharing web app and there are hundreds of out of the box apps available that will run just fine on Apache. Even if you do not like any readymade solution, you could write a webapp in PHP / Java / Python or mix n match it with a couple of ready made apps and they are all designed and supported to run behind a single instance of Apache.

It's time to pause and think about what I just said.

Now you are ready to decide on which techstack you are going to use. If your website will never use any out of the thousands of ready made apps that require Apache, then go for Node otherwise you must first eliminate the assumptions that I have stated earlier.

In the end, your choice of techstack is way more important than any individual component.

I completely agree with @Straseus that it is relatively trivial to use node.js file system api for handling uploads and downloads but think more about what you want from your website in the long run and then choose your techstack.

Learning Node's framework is easier than learning other frameworks but it is not a panacea. With a slightly more effort (which may be a worthwhile endeavor in itself), you can learn any other framework too. We all learn from each other and you will be more productive if you are working as a small team than if you are working alone and your backend technical skills will also develop faster. Therefore, do not discount the skills of other members of your team so cheaply.

This post is about a year old and chances are that you have already decided but I hope that my rant will help the next person who is going through a similar decision.

Thanks for reading.

User · Answer

Great question   There are many websites and free web apps implemented in PHP that run on Apache  lots of people use it so you can mash up something pretty easy and besides  its a no-brainer way of serving static content  Node is fast  powerful  elegant  and a sexy tool with the raw power of V8 and a flat stack with no in-built dependencies    I also want the ease flexibility of Apache and yet the grunt and elegance of Node JS  why can t I have both   Fortunately with the ProxyPass directive in the Apache httpd conf its not too hard to pipe all requests on a particular URL to your Node JS application   ProxyPass  node http   localhost 8000   Also  make sure the following lines are NOT commented out so you get the right proxy and submodule to reroute http requests   LoadModule proxy module modules mod proxy so LoadModule proxy http module modules mod proxy http so   Then run your Node app on port 8000   var http   require  http    http createServer function  req  res      res writeHead 200    Content-Type    text plain       res end  Hello Apache  n       listen 8000   127 0 0 1      Then you can access all Node JS logic using the  node  path on your url  the rest of the website can be left to Apache to host your existing PHP pages     Now the only thing left is convincing your hosting company let your run with this configuration

User · Answer

I was looking for the same information  Finally found the answer from the link on the answer above by  Straseus  http   arguments callee info 2010 04 20 running-apache-and-node-js-together   Here is the final solution to run apache website on port 80  node js service on port 8080 and use  htaccess RewriteRule  In the DocumentRoot of the apache website  add the following   Options  FollowSymLinks -MultiViews   lt IfModule mod rewrite c gt   RewriteEngine on    Simple URL redirect  RewriteRule  test html  http   arguments callee info 8000 test   P     More complicated  the user sees only  benchmark html  in their address bar  RewriteRule  benchmark html  http   arguments callee info 8000 node action benchmark  P     Redirect a whole subdirectory  RewriteRule  node      http   arguments callee info 8000  1  P      For the directory level redirect  the link above suggested      rule  which requires one or more character after the  node    I had to convert it to      which is zero or more for my stuff to work   Thanks a lot for the link  Straseus

User · Answer

Running Node and Apache on one server is trivial as they don t conflict  NodeJS is just a way to execute JavaScript server side  The real dilemma comes from accessing both Node and Apache from outside  As I see it you have two choices    Set up Apache to proxy all matching requests to NodeJS  which will do the file uploading and whatever else in node  Have Apache and Node on different IP port combinations  if your server has two IPs  then one can be bound to your node listener  the other to Apache     I m also beginning to suspect that this might not be what you are actually looking for  If your end goal is for you to write your application logic in Nodejs and some  file handling  part that you off-load to a contractor  then its really a choice of language  not a web server

User · Answer

This question belongs more on Server Fault but FWIW I d say running Apache in front of Node js is not a good approach in most cases   Apache s ProxyPass is awesome for lots of things  like exposing Tomcat based services as part of a site  and if your Node js app is just doing a specific  small role or is an internal tool that s only likely to have a limited number of users then it might be easier just to use it so you can get it working and move on  but that doesn t sound like the case here   If you want to take advantage of the performance and scale you ll get from using Node js - and especially if you want to use something that involves maintaining a persistent connection like web sockets - you are better off running both Apache and your Node js on other ports  e g  Apache on localhost 8080  Node js on localhost 3000  and then running something like nginx  Varnish or HA proxy in front - and routing traffic that way   With something like varnish or nginx you can route traffic based on path and or host  They both use much less system resources and is much more scalable that using Apache to do the same thing

User · Answer

ProxyPass  node http   localhost 8000          this worked for me when I made above entry in httpd-vhosts conf instead of httpd conf I have XAMPP installed over my environment  amp  was looking to hit all the traffic at apache on port 80 with NodeJS applicatin running on 8080 port i e  http   localhost  name of the node application

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I combined the answer above with certbot SSL cert and CORS access-control-allow-headers and got it working so I thought I would share the results   Apache httpd conf added to the bottom of the file   LoadModule proxy module modules mod proxy so LoadModule proxy http module modules mod proxy http so   Apache VirtualHost settings  doc root for PHP is under Apache and SSL with Certbot  while node js socket io site runs on port 3000 - and uses SSL cert from Apache  Also notice the node js site uses the proxy for the folder  nodejs  socket io  and ws  websockets     lt IfModule mod ssl c gt   lt VirtualHost   443 gt      ServerName www example com     ServerAlias www example com     DocumentRoot  var html www example com     ErrorLog  var html log error log     CustomLog  var html log requests log combined     SSLCertificateFile  etc letsencrypt live www example com fullchain pem     SSLCertificateKeyFile  etc letsencrypt live www example com privkey pem     Include  etc letsencrypt options-ssl-apache conf      RewriteEngine On     RewriteCond   REQUEST URI    socket io           NC      RewriteCond   QUERY STRING  transport websocket  NC      RewriteRule             ws   localhost 3000  1   P L       RewriteCond   HTTP Connection  Upgrade  NC      RewriteRule       ws   localhost 3000  1  P L       ProxyPass  nodejs http   localhost 3000      ProxyPassReverse  nodejs http   localhost 3000       ProxyPass  socket io http   localhost 3000 socket io     ProxyPassReverse  socket io http   localhost 3000 socket io      ProxyPass  socket io ws   localhost 3000 socket io     ProxyPassReverse  socket io ws   localhost 3000 socket io   lt  VirtualHost gt   lt  IfModule gt    Then my node js app  app js    var express   require  express    var app   express        app use function req  res  next            res header  Access-Control-Allow-Origin                 res header  Access-Control-Allow-Headers    X-Requested-With            res header  Access-Control-Allow-Headers    Content-Type            res header  Access-Control-Allow-Methods    PUT  GET  POST  DELETE  OPTIONS            next            var http   require  http   Server app   var io   require  socket io   http    http listen  host  0 0 0 0  port 3000      I force a ip4 listener  but that is optional - you can substitute   http listen 3000     node js app  app js  code continues with   io of   nodejs   on  connection   function socket          optional settings      io set  heartbeat timeout   3000        io set  heartbeat interval   1000          listener for when a user is added     socket on  add user   function data             socket join  AnyRoomName             socket broadcast emit  user joined   data                  listener for when a user leaves     socket on  remove user   function data             socket leave  AnyRoomName             socket broadcast emit  user left   data                  sample listener for any other function     socket on  named-event   function data               code              socket broadcast emit  named-event-broadcast   data                   add more listeners as needed    use different named-events          finally  on the client side  created as nodejs js      notice the  nodejs path var socket   io connect  https   www example com nodejs       listener for user joined socket on  user joined   function data           code    data shows who joined           listener for user left socket on  user left   function data           code    data shows who left            sample listener for any function  socket on  named-event-broadcast   function data           this receives the broadcast data  I use json then parse and execute code      console log  data1     data data1       console log  data2     data data2           sample send broadcast json data for user joined  socket emit  user joined          userid    userid-value        username   username-value          sample send broadcast json data for user left     I added the following with an event listener for  beforeunload       socket emit  user joined             userid    userid-value           username   username-value             sample send broadcast json data for any named-event  socket emit  named-event          data1    value1        data2   value2        In this example when the JS loads  it will emit to the socket a  named-event  sending the data in JSON to the node js socket io server   Using the io and socket on the server under path  nodejs  connected by client   receives the data an then resends it as a broadcast  Any other users in the socket would receive the data with their listener  named-event-broadcast   Note that the sender does not receive their own broadcast

User · Answer

I recently ran into this kinda issue  where I need to communicate between client and server using websocket in a PHP based codeigniter project   I resolved this issue by adding my port node app running on  into Allow incoming TCP ports  amp  Allow outgoing TCP ports lists   You can find these configurations in Firewall Configurations in your server s WHM panel

User · Answer

You can use a different approach such as writing a reverse proxy server with nodejs to proxy both apache and all other nodejs apps   First you need to make apache run on a different port other than port 80  ex  port 8080  Then you can write a reverse proxy script with nodejs as   var proxy   require  redbird    port  80  xfwd  false    proxy register  mydomain me blog    http   mydomain me 8080 blog    proxy register  mydomain me    http   mydomain me 3000      Following article describes the whole process of making this   RUN APACHE WITH NODE JS REVERSE PROXY     USING REDBIRD

User · Answer

Instructions to run node server along apache2 v2 4 xx  server    In order to pipe all requests on a particular URL to your Node JS application create CUSTOM conf file inside  etc apache2 conf-available directory  and add following line to the created file   ProxyPass  node http   localhost 8000    Change 8000 to the prefered port number for node server   Enable custom configurations with following command     gt  sudo a2enconf CUSTOM   CUSTOM is your newly created filename without extension  then enable proxy http with the command     gt  sudo a2enmod proxy http   it should enable both proxy and proxy http modules  You can check whether module is enabled or not with     gt  sudo a2query -m MODULE NAME   After configuration and modules enabled  you will need to restart apache server     gt  sudo service apache2 restart   Now you can execute node server  All requests to the URL node will be handled by node server

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