How should I deploy Angular + NodeJS project on a server?

Question

I have an Angular project with NodeJS backend. I am confused about how to deploy my project on a remote server? I decided to use webpack because of it's simplicity, so I ran the following command:

ng build --prod

And it made a folder called dist for me. I think I must copy the content of this folder into the public folder of my NodeJS backedn server, but I am not really sure if I do the right thing?

Should I change other configuration of my frontend or backend codes too? Or just copying dist folder into the server's public folder should solve everything?

Answer 1

You have a very good documentation guide by Angular: https://angular.io/guide/deployment

And yes, you should copy dist/yourproyect (Angular compiled to HTML+CSS+JavaScript+Assets) to any web server you want to deploy it.

For isolation purposes (and maybe configuration), I'd recommend to put front and back in different folders. But you can deploy it within NodeJS.

In short: A web server Apache/Nginx/IIS/GitHubPages/Firebase/etc for Angular and PM2 ( https://pm2.keymetrics.io/ ) to launch your NodeJS. But depending on your expected load, you may want to choose one server type or another.

Anyway, if you specifically want to serve Angular through NodeJS , I'd recommend this tutorial (2016, maybe bit outdated, but it will help): https://scotch.io/tutorials/mean-app-with-angular-2-and-the-angular-cli