Deploy express.js on netlify

Deploy your node application using netlfiy functions

AWS’s serverless Lambda functions open a world of possibilities for running on-demand, server-side code without having to run a dedicated server.

Netlify lets you deploy serverless Lambda functions without an AWS account, and with function management handled directly within Netlify. Your serverless functions are version-controlled, built, and deployed along with the rest of your Netlify site, and we will automatically handle service discovery through our built-in API gateway. This eliminates overhead and brings the power of Deploy Previews and rollbacks to your serverless functions.

We will run through how to deploy a ‘Hello World’ express.js app to netlify.

Create project

To start, create a new directory and cd into it:

mkdir netlify-demo
cd netlify-demo

Create package.json

Next make a package.json file with all the default values. You can do this via yarn init and simply answering the questions that follow via the terminal.

Add the netlify-lambda package

The netlify-lambda package will serve our functions locally, and then compile for production.

yarn add express netlify-lambda serverless-http

Create a .gitignorefile:

node_modules
functions

Set up netlify depolyment files

Create a netlify.toml file:

[build]
functions = "functions"

Every time you deploy to netlify, you need to give it a dist directory:

dist folder

The index.html file can be blank.

Next, create a src directory and api file:

src folder

Now add these test endpoints:

We can set up the following script commands in package.json :

"scripts": {
"start": "./node_modules/.bin/netlify-lambda serve src",
"build": "./node_modules/.bin/netlify-lambda build src"
},

You should be able to run the app with yarn start and hit these endpoints with http://localhost:9000/.netlify/functions/api/test

Finally, to deploy this to netlify, add the project to a git repository and connect it with netlify.

Thanks for reading!