Setting up a NodeJS web server on Android using Termux

#webdev #javascript #node #android

Node on a Cob

Ever been in a position where you are without your laptop? (or it crashed on you unexpectedly for some arcane reason), while you were in the middle of squashing a ladybug that wouldn't let users successfully sign up on your top of the line web service.

No?
Well okay I admit that was a little too specific. Anyways here's how to use your phone by which I mean Android to spin up a fully functional nodeJS environment for all your on the go Server maintenance needs, /s.

First you would want to

Download and Install the Termux app. 🧊

You would find a version on the Play store but I wouldn't recommend using that as it is outdated, unmaintained and possibly deprecated, so just head over to the official GitHub Repo here and download the latest version 0.118.0 at the time of writing.
Or if you got beef with Microsoft you can as well get the latest version from Fdroid, a great Open source application hosting site for Android.
Okay so what is Termux exactly? You may ask.
Well as the name would imply Termux is a Terminal emulator and Linux environment that runs on Android's Linux kernel .
Termux combines powerful terminal emulation with an extensive Linux package collection.
With Termux you can:
• Enjoy the bash and zsh shells.
• Manage files with nnn and edit them with nano, vim or emacs.
• Access servers over ssh.
• Develop in C with clang, make and gdb.
• Use the python console as a pocket calculator.
• Check out projects with git.
• Run text-based games with frotz.
And much more... But let's get back to certain time here. We just want a simple nodeJS application.

Next step would be..

Launching the App 🍷

No brainer, press on it 👀

You would be greeted with a black screen much like, if not exactly like this

Looks familiar? Ofc it does. It's textbook terminal output.

Now let's see if it's functional,
I have tried out some simple Linux Commands like mkdir, ls, cd and cat

You will notice I already have some fully fledged applications in that directory, this is because I have previously installed Git and used it to pull a repository from my remote to work on with my phone. For you it's all most likely a blob of emptiness. That's normal, and should be expected.

Okay that's cool and all, but how do I actually install Node You may ask. We are getting there.

So Thirdly ⛷️

As you may have seen from my previous screenshot, Termux's package install command goes a bit like
pkg install <package-name>
And another useful command also on the image is
pkg search <package-name>
And yes it does what you think it does.

Using the search command,

we can check to see if our package manager even has this thing called Node.
To do that we would.. you guessed it, do a search with
pkg search node
This returns

And we can see that they have the Node v16 and v18, i.e. stable and the latest versions as at the time of writing.

Note: If you get an older version or nothing found, then try doing pkg upgrade before proceeding with the next step.

Install Node

To install, use the install command
pkg install nodejs-lts or pkg install nodejs
Making sure you spell it exactly is it was on the search result.
If successful you would get something like
Or maybe a little different, because I only did an update from nodev16.14 to nodev16.15 but you get the idea.

Finally 🌊

Do a node -v to check if it's installed correctly.

And there you have it, a fully functional nodeJS environment on your smartphone.

NB Termux persists as a background service (In case you have a server running. 👀) so when you are done using it always close it completely from your notification drop-down.
Like so,

Stay tuned (or follow) for my post on setting up a complete authentication flow on our mobile environment using Node, Express, and a really cool Postman alternative