Question

I’m just getting started on using Node.js and I’m running into a problem where I can only access my Node server locally. I’m loosely following the tutorial here: http://coenraets.org/blog/2012/10/creating-a-rest-api-using-node-js-express-and-mongodb/.

I’m hosting the code on an Apache server share though I’ve gotten it to run locally on my win7 machine as well. The server share hosted instance runs fine and I can ping it locally with lynx and it runs great. However, when I try to access the instance remotely at hostname.com:3001 or hostname.com:3001/wines, it simply times out. My server logs show incoming connections on that port but it doesn’t seem to be getting through to the instance.

I tried moving the instance from my Node development directory to the www directory, thinking that it was a permissions issue but that didn’t help. I’m not familiar at all with working with Apache so I’m probably missing some sort of basic permissions setting. The share is hosted at bluehost for what it’s worth. I checked the admin setting and I couldn’t find any firewall that would have blocked that port.

var express = require('express');
var http = require('http');
var app = express();
var server = http.createServer(app);

app.get('/', function(req, res){
        console.log('ping');
});
app.get('/wines', function(req, res){
        console.log('req @ /wines');
        res.send([{name:'wine1'},{name:'wine2'},{name:'wine foo'}]);
});

server.listen(3001);
console.log('listening to port ', server.address().port);

Answer 1

For this to work in bluehost, you first have to have a dedicated IP account (see https://my.bluehost.com/cgi/help/405), then you have to request that they allow incoming connections to port 3001.

However, I suspect that if you want nodejs you would be better off finding a new hosting provider.