This demo is inspired by nodejs-backend-bundling-experiment from @dominique-mueller and the article about How to Compile Node.js Code Using Bytenode?.
A typical Node.js backend application like a rest api needs a npm install and a npm start to run on a server. This fits the needs on most projects and is easy to achieve. This also means that you always run the install command and probably get a different version of a node module or a sub module when they have updated.
When you need to be compliant and your enterprise uses SDLC (Software Development Life Cycle) processes you will need a fix package with a fix version. It is also not so good to store the hole node_modules folders on a repository management system like Artifactory for your deployable.
Another thing could be that there are many situations where you do not want to send your source code to a server to run your project. This can be the case if you sell your software to a client and run it on its server.
In short, I want to create, bundle, compile, and run a Node.js REST API on a server without running npm install.
Run npm install and start the app by node . or npm start.
After starting the server, open your browser at http://localhost:3000/. You will see a simple json response from the server, that it is running. When accessing http://localhost:3000/hello, you will respond with World. On any other routes you will get an 404 error. You can stop the server by using CTRL + C. No big magic.
The main purpose of this demo is bundling the app via webpack, compile it into V8 bytecode and ensure that this will run as well.
Execute the command npm run build to bundle the package and compile it to bytecode. To check if this is running as well, you can run npm run start:prod to run the compiled version.
You will need a server where you have Node.js >= 6.11 installed. To avoid installing bytenode in your project folder, you should install bytenode as global package as well. The only file, that is needed (from this demo) are the app.bundle.jsc (with a c at the end). You can run your packages with bytenode -r app.bundle.jsc (add the complete path depending on your file system for your own). Hint: use pm2 to make administration easier.
Best regards,
FK
(Frankfurt 2018)