How to package & deploy Node.js + express web application?

Question

I am new to Node.js programming and I have recently created a sample working web application using (express, backbone & other complimentary view technologies, with mongoDB). Now i am at a point where I want to deploy the same on a staging environment and I am not sure how to package this application and distribute the same. [I can take care of mongoDb and setting it up seperately]

I am from Java world and in there we create jars for reusable libs and war/ear packages for web applications which is deployed in a servlet container. Now in this case since node.js itself acts as a web container as well, how do i package my webapp?

1. Is there any standard format/guidelines of packaging node webapps built using express? (Is there a similar jar/war packaging systems for node apps?)
2. How do I deploy it once packaged? Would it become an exe, since it is also its own container?

PS: As of now I am thinking of just manually copying all the required source files into the staging environment and run npm commands to download all dependencies on that machine and then use 'forever' or some other mechanism to run my server.js. (Also, add some sort of monitoring, just in case app crashes and forever fails) I am not sure if that is the right way? I am sure there must be some standardized way of addressing this problem.

Answer 1

There is no standardized way, but you're on the right track. If your package.json is up to date and well kept, you can just copy/zip/clone your app directory to the production system, excluding the node_modules.

On your production system, run npm install to install your dependencies, npm test if you have tests and finally NODE_ENV=production node server.js

Some recent slides I considered to be quite helpful that also include the topic of wrappers like forever, can be found here.