Spark is a command-line tool used to start up node server instances written by Tj Holowaychuk and Tim Caswell. It's part of the Connect framework, however can be used standalone with any node server.
NOTE: spark is no longer maintained, for an extensible, and more robust solution check out Cluster.
Spark provides the following options when starting a server.
- Port/Host to listen on
- SSL hosting with specified key/certificate
- Automatic child process spawning for multi-process node servers that share a common port.
- User/Group to drop to after binding (if run as root)
- Environment modes (development/testing/production)
- Modify the node require paths
- Can load any of these configs from from a file (optionally grouped by env)
- Can change the working directory before running the app
--commentoption to label processes in system tools likepsorhtop- Pass arbitrary code or environment variables to the app
Any node server can be used with spark. All you need to do it create a file called app.js that exports the instance of http.Server or net.Server.
A hello-world example would look like this:
module.exports = require('http').createServer(function (req, res) {
res.writeHead(200, {"Content-Type":"text-plain"});
res.end("Hello World");
});
And then to run it you simply go to the folder containing the app.js and type:
$ spark
The output you'll see will be:
Spark server(34037) listening on http://*:3000 in development mode
Where 34037 is the process id. If you want 4 processes to balance the requests across, no problem.
$ spark -n 4
And you'll see:
Spark server(34049) listening on http://*:3000 in development mode
Spark server(34050) listening on http://*:3000 in development mode
Spark server(34052) listening on http://*:3000 in development mode
Spark server(34051) listening on http://*:3000 in development mode
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