Can I tell foreman to reload the web app every time a request is made so I can develop decently?

Question

A web app I am writing in JavaScript using node.js. I use Foreman, but I don\'t want to manually restart the server every time I change my code. Can I tell Foreman to reload

Answer 1

The problem isn't with Foreman so much as it's with how node doesn't reload code on new requests. The solution is to use an npm package like supervisor along with an environment wrapper for Foreman.

First, install supervisor:

npm install -g supervisor

Then, write a wrapper shell script that Foreman can call:

if [ "$NODE_ENV" == "production" ]; then
  node /path/to/app.js
else
  supervisor /path/to/app.js
fi

Set the wrapper script's permissions to executable by running chmod a+x /path/to/wrapper_script.sh

Lastly, update foreman to use the wrapper script. So in your Procfile:

web: /path/to/wrapper_script.sh

Now when you run Foreman and your node app isn't running in production, it should reload on every request.