How to run Node.js (Websocket) as windows service

In a recent project we are using websockets to respond in Apex to certain database events.

The websocket server is based upon node.js. One of the tasks was to setup this server as an service under a normal Windows Server 2003 (yes I know it is old) infrastructure. This post describes the steps how to setup such a service and also includes some monitoring information.

The prerequisties are that you already need to have node installed on your machine.

To start the websocket server we would usually call

node synwsserver.js

This starts the server. All the output (console.log) will be written to the terminal.

But we don’t want to run it manually each time. Instead we would like to setup it as a windows service. So here is how to achieve that. The same logic can be applied for any node module, not just for websockets.

 

1) Load node-windows

The node package that I used is node-windows. It is very lightweight and did not have dependencies to node-gyp which often gives trouble.

The command to install it is:

npm install node-windows

The author recommends to install it using the global flag -g. You might want to consider it. I did not encounter issues without the global flag.

2) Install the service

In the node “shell” run the following commands.
The script name is the same script that would be called directly from node.

File: installServiceApexWS.js

var Service = require('node-windows').Service;

// Create a new service object
var svc = new Service({
  name:'syn-apex-websocket',
  description: 'The websocket server for the APEX project.',
  script: 'D:\\tomcat\\nodejs\\synwsserver.js'
});

// Listen for the 'install' event, which indicates the
// process is available as a service.
svc.on('install',function(){
  svc.start();
});

// install the service
svc.install();

The name and the description can then be seen in the windows service tool.

Result

And we are able to start and stop the service.

Problem solved!

Ok there is a tiny bit more. We want to be able to uninstall it as well. And we need to think about the messages that were previously written to the console.

Run in Batch

The sequence of javascript commands can also be put into a .BAT file. I choose to separate the batch call from the js code, so there are two files now.

File: installServiceApexWS.bat

echo "Installing service..."
start "install service - Syntegris APEX websocket server" node installServiceApexWS.js
echo "Service installiert."
exit;

 

3) Uninstall the service

The logic to deinstall the service is very similar to installing it.

File: uninstallServiceApexWS.js

var Service = require('node-windows').Service;

// Create a new service object
var svc = new Service({
  name:'syn-apex-websocket',
  description: 'The websocket server for the APEX project.',
  script: 'D:\\tomcat\\nodejs\\synwsserver.js'
});

// Listen for the 'uninstall' event so we know when it is done.
svc.on('uninstall',function(){
  console.log('Uninstall complete.');
  console.log('The service exists: ',svc.exists);

});

// Uninstall the service.
svc.uninstall();

File: uninstallServiceApexWS.bat

echo "Uninstalling service..."
start "uninstall service - Syntegris APEX websocket server"  node uninstallServiceApexWS.js
echo "Service deinstalliert."
exit;

 

 

 

4) Add event logging

Node-windows comes with same basic windows event logging. That means certain type of actions can be written into the default windows eventlog.

An example

/*
  add logging for Windows events
*/
var EventLogger = require('node-windows').EventLogger;
var log = new EventLogger('syn-apex-websocket');

...

/* Start listening on the configured port and write to standard output*/
server.listen(config.port, function() {
    console.log((new Date()) + ' Server is listening on port ' + config.port);
    log.info('Server is listening on port ' + config.port);

});

An this is how the result looks like in the Event Viewer (search for Event on your Windows Server) to find the tool.