Using Node.js only vs. using Node.js with Apache/Nginx

by

There are several good reasons to stick another webserver in front of Node.js:

  • Not having to worry about privileges/setuid for the Node.js process. Only root can bind to port 80 typically. If you let nginx/Apache worry about starting as root, binding to port 80, and then relinquishing its root privileges, it means your Node app doesn’t have to worry about it.
  • Serving static files like images, css, js, and html. Node may be less efficient compared to using a proper static file web server (Node may also be faster in select scenarios, but this is unlikely to be the norm). On top of files serving more efficiently, you won’t have to worry about handling eTags or cache control headers the way you would if you were servings things out of Node. Some frameworks may handle this for you, but you would want to be sure. Regardless, still probably slower.
  • As Matt Sergeant mentioned in his answer, you can more easily display meaningful error pages or fall back onto a static site if your node service crashes. Otherwise users may just get a timed out connection.
  • Running another web server in front of Node may help to mitigate security flaws and DoS attacks against Node. For a real-world example, CVE-2013-4450 is prevented by running something like Nginx in front of Node.

I’ll caveat the second bullet point by saying you should probably be serving your static files via a CDN, or from behind a caching server like Varnish. If you’re doing this it doesn’t really matter if the origin is Node or Nginx or Apache.

Caveat with nginx specifically: if you’re using websockets, make sure to use a recent version of nginx (>= 1.3.13), since it only just added support for upgrading a connection to use websockets.

More Related Contents:

  1. How do I debug “Error: spawn ENOENT” on node.js?
  2. Express.js req.body undefined
  3. How do I install a module globally using npm?
  4. How to use private Github repo as npm dependency
  5. How do I import global modules in Node? I get “Error: Cannot find module “?
  6. how to test Cloud Functions for Firebase locally on pc
  7. npm install from Git in a specific version
  8. Cannot enqueue Handshake after invoking quit
  9. Restrict access to Node.js-based HTTP server by IP address
  10. Change node_modules location
  11. Cannot app.use(multer). “requires middleware function” error
  12. Google App Engine 502 (Bad Gateway) with NodeJS
  13. How to create .pem files for https web server
  14. Can’t use NVM from root (or sudo)
  15. node.js child process – difference between spawn & fork
  16. Get all files recursively in directories NodejS
  17. Grunt on Windows 8: ‘grunt’ is not recognized
  18. What are “signed” cookies in connect/expressjs?
  19. How to install a specific version of Node on Ubuntu?
  20. Node.js, can’t open files. Error: ENOENT, stat ‘./path/to/file’
  21. MomentJS getting JavaScript Date in UTC
  22. how to use async await with https post request
  23. Why POST redirects to GET and PUT redirects to PUT?
  24. Check for current Node Version
  25. Separating file server and socket.io logic in node.js
  26. libsass bindings not found when using node-sass in nodejs
  27. Nodejs Child Process: write to stdin from an already initialised process
  28. Meteor WebSocket handshake error 400 with nginx
  29. How npm start runs a server on port 8000
  30. How random is crypto#randomBytes?

Leave a Comment