Where I should create a directory for nodejs apps?

Question

I'm not familiar with Ubuntu. I want to make some nodejs apps for testing, now I'm confused where I should create a directory for it.

I have searched in google and I found every one saying

sudo apt-get install nodejs npm

and create server.js file and put this code blah blah and run npm server.js etc.

But where I should create this file? Where I should create directory?

I know about /var/www/html but there are my other php projects here.

Answer 1

For development use a subdirectory if your user home dir.

E.g., ~/projects/test-project like somebody suggested.

You would usually add this to git, too. E.g.

mkdir -p ~/projects/test-project
cd ~/projects/test-project
# add your server.js now
git init
git add .
git commit -a -m 'here goes nothing'

For testing, you might wanna do something closer to what your deployment site looks like. Usually it's /srv/project-name or /var like you've suggested.

Those directories usually don't exist and you cannot access them by default, so you create them with sudo. Example:

sudo mkdir -p /srv/my-project
sudo chown `whoami`:`whoami` /srv/my-project
cd /srv/my-project
git clone ~/projects/test-project .

Now you can test both local dev version and the test one.

P.S. You should try nvm.sh for installing node, much more versions and fresher ones.

Answer 2

You can place the projects anywhere you like. I usually put them in ~/projects.

Running npm start will fire up a web server running at http://localhost:8080, so there's no need for /var/www if you're just doing some testing.