How to connect plunker to a local Node.js server?

Question

I want to connect my plunk to a node server running on my local machine. I want to achieve this in order to obtain some data from a database. At the moment I have created some sample data in the app.js file on my plunk.

Is there any way to do this? If not with plunker, is there any alternative where I can run Node.js apps online?

Answer 1

Regarding your question about an alternative for hosting Node.js apps you could have a look at Cloud9

Update: It is possible to connect to a local machine but you have to take CORS into consideration. I made a quick sample to show you that it is possible. Following is a simple Node.js application which responds with "Huhu!" when sending a GET to http://localhost:3000/ping

var express = require('express');
var cors = require('express-cors')
var app = express();

app.use(cors({
    allowedOrigins: [
        'run.plnkr.co'
    ]
}));

app.get('/ping', function(req, res) {
    res.send('Huhu!');
});

app.listen(3000, function () {
  console.log('Example app listening on port 3000!');
});

In addition, here is a simple Plunker for connecting to it, whereby the 'important' part is

$scope.pingLocalNodeServer = function() {
  $http.get('http://localhost:3000/ping')
       .then(function(response) {
          $scope.echo = response.data;
        }, function(error) {
          $scope.err = error;
        });
  };

Hope that helps you