Running basic node.js on windows hosted site

Question

I need some advice for getting a basic express app to work on my site. The site is hosted on Arvixe.com windows hosting. I can run code on my localhost and it works but as soon as I move it to the Arvixe site it is giving me a 404 error - file or directory not found.

At the root of my site I have a folder called node_modules that has express in it. I also have a app.js file and a web.config file.

This is the web.config file:

<configuration>
  <system.webServer>
    <handlers>
            <add name="iisnode" path="app.js" verb="*" modules="iisnode" />
    </handlers>
    <defaultDocument enabled="true">
        <files>
            <add value="app.js" />
        </files>
    </defaultDocument>
  </system.webServer>
</configuration>

This is the app.js file:

var express = require('express');
var app = express();

app.get('/', function(request, response) {
    response.send("This would be some HTML");
});

app.get('/api', function(request, response) {
    response.send({name:"Raymond",age:40});
});
app.listen(process.env.PORT);

The only difference between the localhost version and this version is there is a web.config file and in app.js I changed app.listen to use PORT instead of a local port number. The only files I'm accessing should be app.js and express and they are both there.

I'm very new to node.js and express. Am I missing something about how these files communicate between one another or what is happening to stop my site from running? Is there a simple way I could debug things like this in the future?

Answer 1

I found a way to get this to work. I added this code to my web.config:

   <rewrite>
      <rules>
        <rule name="/">
          <match url="/*" />
          <action type="Rewrite" url="app.js" />
        </rule>
      </rules>
    </rewrite> 

I'm surprised this was necessary because app.js was set to the default document. Apparently Express requires rewriting the urls instead of using the default document tags.