“Cannot GET /test_app” error on A2Hosting

Question

In the A2 Hosting documentation they give a sample on how to create a NodeJS application and to run it through their cPanel interface.

I have set up a simple nodejs hello world test app, but Im getting a "Cannot GET /test_app" error.

Setup:

• I have set up a sub domain api.domain.com
• External DNS entry was created and I am able to load https://api.domain.com
• I have created a hello world nodejs app (as per your knowledge base) - https://www.a2hosting.com/kb/cpanel/cpanel-software/create-application-with-nodejs-selector )
• I have done the setup and created a NodeJS App in cPanel
• I have run the npm install to load the node modules

When I run the app in the browser ( https://api.domain.com/test_app ) I get the "Cannot GET /test_app" error.

In the log I can see that the app is running: App 30562 output: Example app listening at 5575

Any suggestions on what I'm missing with the NodeJS setup??

Answer 1

The problem with the application running the NodeJS deployment on cPanel.

A2 Hosting is using Phusion Passenger as it's deployment agent, and it does not use the root path as '/', but as '/yourAppURL' to forward requests to. So in your NodeJS code, you have to add the specified AppURLPath to the route when using Express...

eg

//Instead of 
app.get('/', (req, res) => res.send('Hello World!'));

//Change to
app.get('/YourSpesifiedAppURLPath/', (req, res) => res.send('Hello World!'));