Getting Started with Nodejitsu on Windows by Deploying a MEN Framework

Disclaimer: I’m in no way affiliated with Nodejitsu or any of the frameworks that I listed below in the post. I’m just documenting my experience with them – problems (and solutions) I’ve faced while trying these new technologies on a Windows machine.

MEN – MongoDB, Express, Node.js, and if you think MEN is not mean enough, take a look at the post on Deploying MEAN.io to Nodejitsu from Windows machine.

Nodejitsu is a cloud platform as a service based on Node.js and serves Node.js applications on their platform. Signup is free, you don’t have to enter billing info in order to try 2 months free (yes, databases work too!), just click on the “Do not select a product now” button:

After signing up, you get a confirmation mail like this:

Welcome to Nodejitsu!
Your Nodejitsu account is activated and ready to go!
username: userName
To confirm your account, install the latest jitsu:
sudo npm install jitsu -g
and then run:
jitsu users confirm userName big-h@5h
This will allow you to deploy applications with:
jitsu deploy

Setting up databases in the web admin interface is easy as you only have to literally click one button after deciding which database type and provider you want:

Hackaton starters are gaining momentum and there are quite a few of them already like:

• Hackaton starter
• Drywall
• DozerJS
• Skeleton
• MEAN - only one which offers Angular out of the box (a follow up post on this is here)

I decided to try out Skeleton, mainly because I liked the “just right” Goldilocks reference

So, as the site suggests, you first have to install:

nodemon

,

gulp

and

mocha

, then clone the github repo,

npm & bower install

everything and you’re done:

# Install global dependencies
npm install -g nodemon gulp mocha

# Clone the repoo (and fetch only the latest commits)
git clone --depth=1 git@github.com:dstroot/skeleton.git
cd skeleton

# Install local dependencies
npm install
bower install

# Start everything up with Gulp 
# (builds the assets and starts the app with nodemon)
gulp

Everything works for you? Great! For the rest of the unlucky ones, you may get (like me) after running

gulp

:

gulp

module.js:340
    throw err;
          ^
Error: Cannot find module 'jshint-stylish'
    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> (C:\Users\Nikola\Desktop\skeleton\gulpfile.js:22:21)
    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 Module.require (module.js:364:17)

I tried

npm install jshint-stylish

, and ran gulp again:

C:\Users\Nikola\Desktop\skeleton>gulp
[gulp] Using gulpfile C:\Users\Nikola\Desktop\skeleton\gulpfile.js
[gulp] Starting 'clean'...
[gulp] Finished 'clean' after 11 ms
[gulp] Starting 'styles'...
[gulp] Starting 'scripts'...
[gulp] Starting 'images'...
[gulp] Finished 'images' after 2.75 ms
[gulp] Starting 'lint'...
[gulp] Finished 'lint' after 192 ms
[gulp] Starting 'watch'...
[gulp] Finished 'watch' after 151 ms
[gulp] Starting 'develop'...
[gulp] Finished 'develop' after 1.68 ms
[gulp] Live reload server listening on: 35729
[gulp] gulp-notify: [Gulp notification] Clean task complete

events.js:72
        throw er; // Unhandled 'error' event
              ^
Error: Incorrect OS. node-notify requires Mac OS 10.8 or higher
    at C:\Users\Nikola\Desktop\skeleton\node_modules\gulp-notify\node_modules\no
de-notifier\lib\terminal-notifier.js:46:25
    at Object.module.exports.isMacOSX (C:\Users\Nikola\Desktop\skeleton\node_mod
ules\gulp-notify\node_modules\node-notifier\lib\utils.js:24:12)
    at Notifier.notify (C:\Users\Nikola\Desktop\skeleton\node_modules\gulp-notif
y\node_modules\node-notifier\lib\terminal-notifier.js:44:11)
    at module.exports (C:\Users\Nikola\Desktop\skeleton\node_modules\gulp-notify
\lib\report.js:17:5)
    at Transform._flush (C:\Users\Nikola\Desktop\skeleton\node_modules\gulp-noti
fy\lib\notify.js:41:5)
    at Transform.<anonymous> (C:\Users\Nikola\Desktop\skeleton\node_modules\gulp
-notify\node_modules\through2\node_modules\readable-stream\lib\_stream_transform
.js:130:12)
    at Transform.g (events.js:180:16)
    at Transform.EventEmitter.emit (events.js:92:17)
    at finishMaybe (C:\Users\Nikola\Desktop\skeleton\node_modules\gulp-notify\no
de_modules\through2\node_modules\readable-stream\lib\_stream_writable.js:363:12)

    at endWritable (C:\Users\Nikola\Desktop\skeleton\node_modules\gulp-notify\no
de_modules\through2\node_modules\readable-stream\lib\_stream_writable.js:370:3)

As the message says (note also on their website),

gulp notify

, which uses

node-notify

is not supported on Windows. The way I solved this was that I removed all of the

.pipe(notify({ onLast: true, message: 'Scripts task complete' }))

lines from

gulpfile.js

, but it still wasn’t enough! Running lint job made the gulp fail, so I removed that too and voila, then it all worked.

A note (though you can look this up on the official github page also) on how to setup Google login by:

• Visit Google Cloud Console
• Click CREATE PROJECT button
• Enter Project Name, then click CREATE
• Then select APIs & auth from the sidebar and click on Credentials tab
• Click CREATE NEW CLIENT ID button
  • Application Type: Web Application
  • Authorized JavaScript origins: http://localhost:3000
  • Authorized redirect URI: http://localhost:3000/auth/google/callback
• Copy and paste Client ID and Client secret keys into config/config.js.

Note: When you ready to deploy to production, don’t forget to add your new url to Authorized Javascript origins and Authorized redirect URI, e.g. http://my-awesome-app.nodejitsu.com and http://my-awesome-app.nodejitsu.com/auth/google/callback respectively. The same goes for other providers.

Deploying to Nodejitsu is done by firstly logging in and then executing

jitsu deploy

:

C:\Users\Nikola\Desktop\skeleton>jitsu login
info:    Welcome to Nodejitsu hitman666
info:    jitsu v0.13.15, node v0.10.26
info:    It worked if it ends with Nodejitsu ok
info:    Executing command login
prompt: username:  (hitman666)
prompt: password:
info:    Authenticated as hitman666
info:    Nodejitsu ok

C:\Users\Nikola\Desktop\skeleton>jitsu deploy

Boom, your app is live on Nodejitsu server and it should look like this (ofc YMMV in term of link):