Create a Node.js app in the App Engine standard environment
Region ID
The REGION_ID
is an abbreviated code that Google assigns
based on the region you select when you create your app. The code does not
correspond to a country or province, even though some region IDs may appear
similar to commonly used country and province codes. For apps created after
February 2020, REGION_ID.r
is included in
App Engine URLs. For existing apps created before this date, the
region ID is optional in the URL.
Learn more about region IDs.
This quickstart shows how to deploy a sample app on App Engine. If you want to learn about coding an app for App Engine, see Building an App.
Is App Engine the right computing option for you? See other options for hosting your application on Google Cloud.
Costs
There are no costs associated with running this guide. Running this sample app alone does not exceed your free quota.
Before you begin
- Sign in to your Google Cloud account. If you're new to Google Cloud, create an account to evaluate how our products perform in real-world scenarios. New customers also get $300 in free credits to run, test, and deploy workloads.
-
In the Google Cloud console, on the project selector page, select or create a Google Cloud project.
-
Make sure that billing is enabled for your Cloud project. Learn how to check if billing is enabled on a project.
-
Enable the Cloud Build API.
- Install and initialize the Google Cloud CLI.
-
In the Google Cloud console, on the project selector page, select or create a Google Cloud project.
-
Make sure that billing is enabled for your Cloud project. Learn how to check if billing is enabled on a project.
-
Enable the Cloud Build API.
- Install and initialize the Google Cloud CLI.
Additional prerequisites
Initialize your App Engine app with your project and choose its region:
gcloud app create --project=[YOUR_PROJECT_ID]
When prompted, select the region where you want to locate your App Engine application.
Install the following prerequisites:
App Engine locations
App Engine is regional, which means the infrastructure that runs your apps is located in a specific region, and Google manages it so that it is available redundantly across all of the zones within that region.
Meeting your latency, availability, or durability requirements are primary factors for selecting the region where your apps are run. You can generally select the region nearest to your app's users, but you should consider the locations where App Engine is available as well as the locations of the other Google Cloud products and services that your app uses. Using services across multiple locations can affect your app's latency as well as its pricing.
You cannot change an app's region after you set it.
If you already created an App Engine application, you can view its region by doing one of the following:
Run the
gcloud app describe
command.Open the App Engine Dashboard in the Google Cloud console. The region appears near the top of the page.
This quickstart demonstrates a simple Node.js application written with the Express.js framework.
Download the sample code
Use our simple Hello World app for a quick overview of deploying a web service on App Engine. Follow these steps to download the code to your development environment:
Download the Node.js sample app repository:
Cloud Shell
Open the repository in Cloud Shell:
Local machine
Download the repository as a ZIP file and extract it.
Alternatively, clone the repository with
git
:git clone https://github.com/GoogleCloudPlatform/nodejs-docs-samples
Change to the directory that contains the Hello World app:
cd nodejs-docs-samples/appengine/hello-world/standard
Run Hello World locally
Install dependencies for the project:
npm install
Start the HTTP server:
npm start
View the app in your web browser:
Cloud Shell
In the Cloud Shell toolbar, click Web preview
and select Preview on port 8080.
Local machine
Point your web browser to
http://localhost:8080
.You can see the message "Hello, world!" displayed on the page.
Stop the HTTP server by pressing Ctrl+C in the terminal window.
Deploy and run Hello World on App Engine
Deploy the Hello World app on App Engine by running the following command from the
hello-world/standard
directory:gcloud app deploy
View the live app at
https://PROJECT_ID.REGION_ID.r.appspot.com
:gcloud app browse
The message "Hello, world!" is now delivered by a web server running on an App Engine instance.
Congratulations! You've successfully deployed a Node.js web service on App Engine!
Clean up
If you want to continue learning about App Engine, you can keep your Cloud project and follow along with Building an App.
Alternatively, you can delete your Cloud project to stop billing for all the resources used within that project.
- In the Google Cloud console, go to the Manage resources page.
- In the project list, select the project that you want to delete, and then click Delete.
- In the dialog, type the project ID, and then click Shut down to delete the project.
What's next
Now that you have experience deploying a web service on App Engine, get a more in-depth walkthrough of Node.js on App Engine by reading Building an App.
For more information about the Node.js runtime in the App Engine standard environment, see Node.js Runtime Environment.