how to store information about detached child process in nodejs command line application

Question

I am building a nodejs commmand line application that starts several detached child processes. Some of them are express severs listening to at a specified port. As I mentioned these processes are detached. How do i store information about these detached child processes like pid to kill them when the user wants.

I have tried writing them into a generic file which I later read to get the data.

Is there a better way?

Answer 1

You don't really have to keep track of all child process for terminating them. You can kill all the child process using their Process Group ID (PGID) .

PGID=$(ps opgid= "$PID" | tr -d ' ')
kill -- -$PGID 

You will get parent process Id (PID) by

ps aux | grep "process_name" | awk '{print $2}'

In your case the process name will be "node"