Horea's Blog

Let’s learn how to build that Node.js web-server using Bluemix! If you prefer video tutorials, please watch the video below.

Before we start, you will need to do a few things.

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Initial Setup

1) Get a Bluemix Account

2) Install Homebrew if you have a mac. Otherwise, skip this step.

3) Install npm/node for Mac or npm/node for Windows

4) Install cf command line tool

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Starter Code

Open up terminal, and use the following git commands:

$ git clone https://github.com/IBM-Bluemix/bluemix-hello-node
$ cd bluemix-hello-node

Test Locally

$ npm install
$ npm start

Once the server is up and running, you can type in your browser “localhost:8080” and you should see the hello world app. If the page is blank, or there is an error, make sure you are in the bluemix-hello-node directory and that there are no errors in the installation of npm or starting the server.
If everything is all and well, your site should look similar to this:

Bluemix Login

Firstly, set the enviornment with the cf api command:

$ cf api https://api.ng.bluemix.net

If all went well, you should see this:

Setting api endpoint to https://api.ng.bluemix.net... OK

Next we need to login to Bluemix:

$ cf login

If you have a IBM w3ID, this will not work, and you will have to use this command instead:

$ cf login -sso

You’ll get prompted with a one time code, and then you can simply copy and paste that code to login.

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Deploy

This is the cool part! Getting to put that app out there!

Firstly, let’s open up our manifest.yml in your favorite text editor, mine being Atom.

Now we must come up with a unique URL for our site. This is done by changing the host: line in the manifest.yml file.

Change the line host: hello-node to username-hello-node. Should look similar to this, except with your own user name, not mine.

One last command:

$ cf push

If you run into the error above it is because the name is not unique.

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Conclusion

If there are no errors, you are officially deployed! Go to http://username-hello-node.mybluemix.net/ to see your finished product! One last thing: if you want to make some changes, simply change something in the index.html file for example, and then just use cf push to deploy your latest changes. Happy coding!