Quickstart for Node.js in the 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. Including REGION_ID.r in App Engine URLs is optional for existing apps and will soon be required for all new apps.

To ensure a smooth transition, we are slowly updating App Engine to use region IDs. If we haven't updated your Google Cloud project yet, you won't see a region ID for your app. Since the ID is optional for existing apps, you don't need to update URLs or make other changes once the region ID is available for your existing apps.

Learn more about region IDs.

OK

Python 2.7/3 |Java 8/11 |PHP 5/7 |Ruby |Go 1.11 / 1.12+ |Node.js

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.

Costs

There are no costs associated with running this guide. Running this sample app alone does not exceed your free quota.

Before you begin

Before running and deploying this quickstart, install the Cloud SDK and then set up a Cloud project for App Engine:

1. Download and install Cloud SDK:

   Download the SDK

   Note: If you already have the Cloud SDK installed, update it by running the following command:

   gcloud components update
   

2. Create a new project:

   gcloud projects create [YOUR_PROJECT_ID] --set-as-default
   

   Replace [YOUR_PROJECT_ID] with a string of characters that uniquely identifies your project. For example, my-project-24.

   Verify the project was created:

   gcloud projects describe [YOUR_PROJECT_ID]
   

   You see project details that might look like the following:

   createTime: year-month-hour
   lifecycleState: ACTIVE
   name: project-name
   parent:
   id: '433637338589'
   type: organization
   projectId: project-name-id
   projectNumber: 499227785679
   

3. 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 your App Engine application located.

   Caution: You cannot change an app's region once it has been set.

4. Make sure billing is enabled for your project. A billing account needs to be linked to your project in order for the application to be deployed to App Engine.

   Enable billing

   Note: Running this sample app does not exceed your free quota.

5. Install the following prerequisites:

   • Download and install Git.
   • Prepare your environment for Node.js development.

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.

Note: Two locations, which are called europe-west and us-central in App Engine commands and in the Google Cloud Console, are called europe-west1 and us-central1, respectively, elsewhere in Google documentation.

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 Cloud Console. The region appears near the top of the page.

OK

This quickstart demonstrates a simple Node.js application written with the Express.js framework.

Important: For the best experience on Windows, upgrade to the latest version of Node.js package manager (npm) by running npm install -g npm. The latest npm installs dependencies in a flat directory structure, so installations are unlikely to conflict with the Windows maximum path length of 255 characters. If you prefer to keep using an older version of npm, you can reduce the length of paths by moving your project to the root of your drive, for example, C:\.

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

   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
   

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://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.

Caution: Deleting a project has the following effects:
• Everything in the project is deleted. If you used an existing project for this tutorial, when you delete it, you also delete any other work you've done in the project.
• Custom project IDs are lost. When you created this project, you might have created a custom project ID that you want to use in the future. To preserve the URLs that use the project ID, such as an appspot.com URL, delete selected resources inside the project instead of deleting the whole project.
1. In the Cloud Console, go to the Manage resources page.

   Go to the Manage resources page

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