Quickstart for Node.js in the App Engine Standard Environment

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Beta

This is a beta release of Node.js in the Google App Engine standard environment. This feature might be changed in backward-incompatible ways and is not subject to any SLA or deprecation policy.

This page shows how to deploy a basic Node.js web service on App Engine.

Before you begin

1. Use the GCP Console to create a Google Cloud Platform project, choose a region where you want your application's resources to be located, and enable billing:

   Go to the Console

   After you choose a region and enable billing, the Dashboard opens.

2. Prepare your development environment. You can either use Google Cloud Shell or your local machine:

   Cloud Shell

   Launch Cloud Shell, which has all the tools you'll need pre-installed:

   Open Cloud Shell

   Local machine

   Install Node.js and set up the Cloud SDK:

   1. Download and install Node.js and npm (Node Package Manager):

      Download and install Node.js and npm

      Important: The Node.js runtime in the App Engine standard environment uses the latest release of Node.js version 8. To avoid errors, ensure you have the same version installed on your machine. For more information about the Node.js runtime, see Node.js Runtime Environment.

   2. Download, install, and then initialize Google Cloud SDK, which provides the gcloud command-line tool:

      Download and install Google Cloud SDK

      By downloading, you agree to be bound by the Terms that govern use of the SDK for App Engine.

App Engine locations

App Engine is regional, which means the infrastructure that runs your apps is located in a specific region and is managed by Google to be redundantly available across all 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 location of the other GCP products and services that are used by your app. Using services across multiple locations can affect your app's latency as well as pricing.

App Engine is available in the following regions:

• northamerica-northeast1 (Montréal)
• us-central (Iowa)
• us-east1 (South Carolina)
• us-east4 (Northern Virginia)
• southamerica-east1 (São Paulo) *
• europe-west (Belgium)
• europe-west2 (London)
• europe-west3 (Frankfurt)
• asia-northeast1 (Tokyo)
• asia-south1 (Mumbai)
• australia-southeast1 (Sydney)

* For customers using the São Paulo region, all regional product SLAs remain in force. However, multi-region and cross-region functionality that span across North America and South America might temporarily have reduced availability or performance.

You cannot change an app's region after you set it.

If you already created an App Engine application, you can view the region by running the gcloud app describe command or opening the App Engine Dashboard in the GCP Console. The region of your App Engine application is listed under http://[YOUR_PROJECT_ID].appspot.com.

OK

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:

1. Download the Node.js sample app repository:

   Cloud Shell

   Clone the Git repository:

   git clone https://github.com/GoogleCloudPlatform/nodejs-docs-samples

   Local machine

   Download the repository as a ZIP file and extract it.

   Alternatively, if you use Git, clone the repository with the following command:

   git clone https://github.com/GoogleCloudPlatform/nodejs-docs-samples

2. Change to the directory that contains the Hello World app:

   cd nodejs-docs-samples/appengine/hello-world/standard
   

Run Hello World locally

1. Install dependencies for the project:

   npm install
   

2. Start the HTTP server:

   npm start
   

3. 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.

4. Stop the HTTP server by pressing Ctrl+C in the terminal window.

Deploy and run Hello World on App Engine

1. Deploy the Hello World app on App Engine by running the following command from the hello-world/standard directory:

   gcloud app deploy
   

2. View the live app at https://YOUR_PROJECT_ID.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 GCP project and follow along with Building an App.

Alternatively, you can delete your GCP project to stop billing for all the resources used within that project.

Warning: Deleting a project has the following consequences:
• If you used an existing project, you'll also delete any other work you've done in the project.
• You can't reuse the project ID of a deleted project. If you created a custom project ID that you plan to use in the future, delete the resources inside the project instead. This step ensures that URLs that use the project ID, such as an appspot.com URL, remain available.
1. In the GCP Console, go to the Projects page.

   Go to the Projects page

2. In the project list, select the project you want to delete and click Delete project.
3. 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.