lee182/routerjon

simple https deployment for nodejs

routerjon

an nodejs expressjs router, giving you outward https encryption with certificates issued from letsencrypt.

basically my script i use for https certs on deployment.

install

npm install -g routerjon

setup

mkdir routerjon
cd routerjon
touch config.json

config json should list the different domains you will use. and to which routerjon should redirect them.

for example the config running on my deployment at blogjono.com is

{
  "ports": {
    "http": 80,
    "https": 443
  },
  "production": true, // server for letsencrypt, note production has rate limit
  "email": "[email protected]",
  "router": { // these are servers already running on the machine
    "blogjono.com": {
      ".": 9000,
      "fcc-pin": 9001,
      "booktrade": 9003
    },
    "opentorah.uk": 9002
  }
}

default config

The default config fills in any gaps missed by your config.

{
  "ports": {
    "http": 3000,
    "https": 3443
  },
  "production": false,
  "spdy": false, // option to use an experimental http2 server
  "domains": {
    "localhost:3000": 9000
  }
}

run

[sudo] routerjon ./conifg.json

run (in background)

nohup routerjon ./config.json

run forever

make sure you are in a directory with a file named exactly config.json

when routerjon crashes it will foreverjs process manager will restart it

[sudo] npm i -g forever
touch routerjon_forever

routerjon_forever file

#!/bin/sh
routerjon ./config.json

[sudo] forever start -c bash routerjon-forever

you may need sudo or root privallages to run the command with the server ports 80 and 443. you will also need to stop any other servers (like nginx, apache) listening on these ports

reload changes

by default when you edit the config with valid json and save the file, changes will be automatically reloaded (thanks to node-watch). This makes it easy to vim into and fiddle with the routers port numbers

run into challenges with letsencrypt

this module uses greenlock v3 to manage certificates which stores the files in ~/.config/greenlock. sometimes you may have to delete this folder if you run into errors in the logs.

suggestions ip-tables

so that the nodejs app does not run as root it is suggested to install and use libcap2

sudo pacman -Syu libcap
sudo setcap cap_net_bind_service=+ep `readlink -f \`which node\``

details

the script will store your certificates in the ~/letsencrypt directory.

i am not sure the greenlock-express module causes them to autorenew.

author & licence

author: Jonathan T L Lee

licence: MIT

repo: https://github.com/Lee182/routerjon

feel free look around the code. its only 176 lines