Hosting a nodejs express site on Windows Azure

Question

I created a new NodeJS site based on the documentation of Durandal. It works locally. I set up Windows Azure to pull in the changes of my GitHub repository, which it does correctly.

However, (after enabling errors) I'm getting the an internal server error.

I checked my FTP for the logs, but don't have any. There is a 'Git' folder, but nothing interesting there.

When I change my server.js file to the hello world sample, everything works:

var http = require('http')
var port = process.env.PORT || 1337;
http.createServer(function(req, res) {
    res.writeHead(200, { 'Content-Type': 'text/plain' });
    res.end('Hello World\n');
}).listen(port);

This is my server.js now:

var express = require('express'),
    routes = require('./routes'),
    engines = require('consolidate');

exports.startServer = function(config, callback) {

  var port = process.env.PORT || config.server.port || 1337;
  var app = express();
  var server = app.listen(port, function() {
    console.log("Express server listening on port %d in %s mode", server.address().port, app.settings.env);
  });

  app.configure(function() {
    app.set('port', port);
    app.set('views', config.server.views.path);
    app.engine(config.server.views.extension, engines[config.server.views.compileWith]);
    app.set('view engine', config.server.views.extension);
    app.use(express.favicon());
    app.use(express.bodyParser());
    app.use(express.methodOverride());
    app.use(express.compress());
    app.use(config.server.base, app.router);
    app.use(express.static(config.watch.compiledDir));
  });

  app.configure('development', function() {
    app.use(express.errorHandler());
  });

  app.get('/', routes.index(config));

  callback(server);
};

So, has anyone succesfully hosted an Express (or more specifically, the Durandal skeleton for Mimosa) NodeJS site on Windows Azure? Or do you know how or where I can find the internal server error?

Answer 1

I've launched a few express applications on the Windows Azure platform and found that I had several instances of it failing quite silently. I personally have found the approach suggested in this post by Jay Harris really helpful as it allows me to import dependencies (npm, bower or other) and run grunt tasks to compile the project etc.

A few things worth noting is that often after a new deploy the updates did not display until restarting the Azure server in the control panel. Sometimes the deploy scripts timed out and I had to check them regularly.

This doesn't exactly answer what's wrong with your code (sorry) but I've posted an example using the method mentioned above that may help. The main deploy files are 'web.config', 'deploy.sh' and '.deployment' as well as your 'package.json' file.