Node.js

Overview

Clever Cloud allows you to deploy any Node.js application. We do support any stable version of Node.js. Their release schedule is available here. This page explains how to set up your application to run it on our service.

Create an application on Clever Cloud

With the web console

Refer to Quickstart for more details on application creation via the console.

With the Clever Tools CLI

1. Make sure you have clever-tools installed locally or follow our CLI getting started guide.
2. In your code folder, do clever create --type <type> <app-name> --region <zone> --org <org> where :
   1. type is the type of technology you rely on
   2. app-name the name you want for your application,
   3. zone deployment zone (par for Paris and mtl for Montreal)
   4. org the organization ID the application will be created under.

Refer to clever create for more details on application creation with Clever Tools.

Setting up environment variables on Clever Cloud

With the Clever Cloud console

1. Go to the Clever Cloud console, and find the app you want to fine tune under it’s organization.
2. Find the Environment variables menu and select it.
3. In this menu, you will see a form with VARIABLE_NAME and variable value fields.
4. Fill them with the desired values then select Add.
5. Don’t forget to “Update Changes” at the end of the menu.

With the Clever Tools CLI

1. Make sure you have clever-tools installed locally. Refer to our CLI getting started.
2. In your code folder, do clever env set <variable-name> <variable-value>

Refer to environment variables reference for more details on available environment variables on Clever Cloud.

You can of course create custom ones with the interface we just demonstrated, they will be available for your application.

Configure your Node.js application

Mandatory configuration

Be sure that:

• you listen on HTTP port 0.0.0.0:8080
• you have a package.json file
• your package.json either has a scripts.start or main field
• the folder /node_modules is mentioned in your .gitignore file
• you enable production mode by setting the environment variable NODE_ENV=production

Set Node.js version

You can use the engines.node field in package.json to define the wanted version, if not provided we will use the latest LTS version available on Clever Cloud.

About package.json

The package.json file should look like the following:

{
  "name" : "myapp",
  "version" : "0.1.0",
  "main" : "myapp.js",
  "scripts" : {
    "start" : "node myapp.js"
  },
  "engines" : {
    "node" : "^20"
  }
}

The following table describes each of the fields formerly mentioned:

Dependencies

If you need some modules you can easily add some with the dependencies field in your package.json. Here is an example:

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{
  "name" : { ... },
  "engines": { ... },
  "dependencies": {
    "express": "4.x",
    "socket.io": "4.7.x",
    "underscore": "1.13.6"
  }
}

If your application has private dependencies, you can add a Private SSH Key.

Development Dependencies

Development dependencies will not be automatically installed during the deployment. You can control their installation setting CC_NODE_DEV_DEPENDENCIES environment variable to install or ignore. This variable overrides the default behavior of NODE_ENV.

Here are various scenarios:

• CC_NODE_DEV_DEPENDENCIES=install: Development dependencies will be installed.
• CC_NODE_DEV_DEPENDENCIES=ignore: Development dependencies will not be installed.
• NODE_ENV=production, CC_NODE_DEV_DEPENDENCIES=install: Development dependencies will be installed.
• NODE_ENV=production, CC_NODE_DEV_DEPENDENCIES=ignore: Development dependencies will not be installed.
• NODE_ENV=production: Package manager (NPM / Yarn) default behavior. Development dependencies will not be installed.
• Neither NODE_ENV nor CC_NODE_DEV_DEPENDENCIES are defined: Package manager (NPM / Yarn) default behavior. Development dependencies will be installed.

Supported package managers

We support any package manager compatible with Node.js. The environment variable CC_NODE_BUILD_TOOL allows you to define which one you want to use. The default value is set to npm, but it can be any of these values:

• npm-install: uses npm install
• npm-ci: uses npm clean-install
• npm: Defaults to npm-install
• yarn: uses yarn@1
• yarn2: uses yarn@2 or later versions
• custom: use another package manager (bun, pnpm, etc.) with CC_CUSTOM_BUILD_TOOL

If a yarn.lock file exists in your application’s main folder, yarn will be set as package manager. To overwrite this behavior, either delete the yarn.lock file or set the CC_NODE_BUILD_TOOL environment variable.

Yarn 3.x and 4.x support

With recent versions of Yarn, you need to put the global folder within your application to manage restarts from build cache. You can do it by setting YARN_GLOBAL_FOLDER to $APP_HOME/.yarncache/ for example, in the Console or through Clever Tools:

clever env set YARN_GLOBAL_FOLDER '$APP_HOME/.yarncache/'

Corepack and packageManager support

Since Node.js v14.19.0 and v16.9.0, you can use Corepack as an experimental feature to set a package manager from npm, pnpm or yarn, and its version. It can be achieved through a simple command (e.g.: corepack use yarn@*) or the packageManager field in package.json. If you use pnpm or yarn, you should always set CC_NODE_BUILD_TOOL and CC_CUSTOM_BUILD_TOOL for pnpm.

Custom build phase

The build phase installs the dependencies and executes the scripts.install you might have defined in your package.json. It’s meant to build the whole application including dependencies and / or assets (if there are any).

All the build part should be written into the scripts.install field of the package.json file. You can also add a custom bash script and execute it with: "scripts.install": "./build.sh". For more information, see the npm documentation

Custom run phase

The run phase is executed from scripts.start if defined. It’s only meant to start your application and should not contain any build task.

Custom run command

If you need to run a custom command (or just pass options to the program), you can specify it through the CC_RUN_COMMAND environment variable. For instance, to launch scripts.start with a yarn based application, you must have CC_RUN_COMMAND="yarn start".

Alternative runtimes

There are multiples JavaScript server runtimes out there. On Clever Cloud, you can deploy your applications with the one of your choice. You’ll find guides for Bun or Deno for example.

Use private repositories with CC_NPM_REGISTRY and NPM_TOKEN

Since April 2015, npm allows you to have private repositories. If you want to use such a feature, you only need to provide the auth token. Add it to your application through the NPM_TOKEN environment variable:

NPM_TOKEN="00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000"

Then, the .npmrc file will be created automatically for your application, with the registry URL and the token.

//registry.npmjs.org/:_authToken=00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000

To authenticate to another registry (like GitHub), you can use the CC_NPM_REGISTRY environment variable to define its host.

CC_NPM_REGISTRY="npm.pkg.github.com"
NPM_TOKEN="00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000"

//npm.pkg.github.com/:_authToken=00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000

Monitor your application with New Relic

You can use New Relic to monitor your application on Clever Cloud.

Please refer to our New Relic documentation to configure it for your application.

Environment injection

Clever Cloud injects environment variables from your application settings as mentioned in setting up environment variables and is also injecting in your application production environment, those from your linked add-ons.

Custom build configurations

On Clever Cloud you can define some build configuration: like the app folder to deploy or the path to validate your application deployment is ready To do that follow the documentation here and add the environement variable you need.

To access environment variables from your code, you can use process.env.MY_VARIABLE.

Git Deployment on Clever Cloud

You need Git on your computer to deploy via this tool. Here is the official website of Git to get more information: git-scm.com

Setting up your remotes

1. The “Information” page of your app gives you your Git deployment URL, it looks like this:

   1. git+ssh://git@push.clever-cloud.com/<your_app_id>.git
   2. Copy it in your clipboard

2. Locally, under your code folder, type in git init to set up a new git repository or skip this step if you already have one

3. Add the deploy URL with git remote add <name> <your-git-deployment-url>

4. Add your files via git add <files path> and commit them via git commit -m <your commit message>

5. Now push your application on Clever Cloud with git push <name> master

Refer to git deployments for more details.

Example: Deploy with pnpm

To deploy an application with pnpm, set the following environment variables:

CC_NODE_BUILD_TOOL="custom"
CC_PRE_BUILD_HOOK="npm install -g pnpm"
CC_CUSTOM_BUILD_TOOL="pnpm install && pnpm build"

CC_NODE_BUILD_TOOL="custom"
CC_PRE_BUILD_HOOK="corepack enable pnpm"
CC_CUSTOM_BUILD_TOOL="pnpm install && pnpm build"

This performs the following steps:

1. CC_NODE_BUILD_TOOL indicates that your applications is using a custom build tool
2. CC_PRE_BUILD_HOOK installs/enable pnpm globally
3. CC_CUSTOM_BUILD_TOOL installs the dependencies and builds the app

Depending on your stack, you may also need to add CC_RUN_COMMAND to your environment variables, with the appropriate command to run your application. For example, to deploy an Astro application in a Node.js runtime, use CC_RUN_COMMAND="pnpm start --port 8080 --host 0.0.0.0".

Automatic HTTPS redirection

You can use the X-Forwarded-Proto header to enable it.

If you are using Express.js, you can use express-sslify by adding:

app.use(enforce.HTTPS({
  trustProtoHeader: true
}));

Troubleshooting your application

If you are often experiencing auto restart of your Node.js instance, maybe you have an application crashing that we automatically restart. To target this behavior, you can gracefully shut down with events handlers on uncaughtExeption unhandledRejection sigint and sigterm and log at this moment, so you can fix the problem.

Linking a database or any other add-on to your application

By linking an application to an add-on, the application has the add-on environment variables in its own environment by default.

On add-on creation

Many add-ons do exist on Clever Cloud: refer to the full list and check add-ons dedicated pages for full instructions.

During add-on creation, an Applications screen appears, with a list of your applications. You can toggle the button to Link and click next. If you finish the process of add-on creation, the application is automatically linked to it.

Add-on already exists

In the Clever Cloud console, under the Service Dependencies menu of your application, you can use the Link add-ons dropdown menu to select the name of the add-on you want to link and use the add button to finish the process.

You can also link another application from the same page in the Clever Cloud console, using the Link applications dropdown menu.

More configuration

Need more configuration? To run a script at the end of your deployment? To add your private SSH key to access private dependencies?

Go check the Common configuration page.

You may want to have an advanced usage of your application, in which case we recommend you to read the Administrate documentation section.

If you can’t find something or have a specific need like using a non supported version of a particular software, please reach out to the support.

Environment injection

Clever Cloud injects environment variables from your application settings as mentioned in setting up environment variables and is also injecting in your application production environment, those from your linked add-ons.

Custom build configurations

On Clever Cloud you can define some build configuration: like the app folder to deploy or the path to validate your application deployment is ready To do that follow the documentation here and add the environement variable you need.

Enable health check during deployment

The healthcheck allows you to limit downtimes. Indeed, you can provide Clever Cloud with paths to check. If these paths return something other than 200, the deployment will fail.

Add one (or several) environment variable as such:

CC_HEALTH_CHECK_PATH=/my/awesome/path

Or

CC_HEALTH_CHECK_PATH_0=/my/awesome/path
CC_HEALTH_CHECK_PATH_1=/my/other/path

The deployment process checks all paths. All of them must reply with a 200 OK response code.

By default, when no environment variable (for ex: APP_HOME) is defined, the monitoring checks your repository root path /.

Example

Using the path listed above, below are the expected logs:

Response from GET /my/awesome/path is 200
Response from GET /my/other/path is 500
Health check failed:
- GET /my/other/path returned 500.
If the deployment fails after this message, please update your configuration and redeploy.

In this example, the first path is OK, but the second one failed. This gives you a hint on what failed in your application.

Best practice for healthcheck endpoints

To make the most of a healthcheck endpoint, have it check your critical dependencies. For example:

• execute SELECT 1 + 1; on your database
• retrieve a specific Cellar file
• ping a specific IP through a VPN

Deployment video