Question

I’ve downloaded and run the latest nodejs .msi for Windows (7), updated PATH (;C:\nodejs), installed nssm and created a service – all’s well there hopefully.

Next, I have a sample server.js file from many an online tutorial and have failed to start the nodejs server via C:\nodejs\node.exe. The nodejs terminal opens, and I can input valid javascript, eg: ["a","b"].join() and receive output: "a,b". My sample file is in the same dir as node.exe – but when I input “node server.js”, all I get is “…”, I must CTRL+C to exit that state.

When I open a Windows cmd prompt, cd C:\nodejs\ and input “node server.js”, I receive the expected output from server.js and localhost: 8124 displays the sample message. I then also tried to use npm to install express via node.exe prompt, but couldn’t

Why won’t node.exe terminal start the sample server, where cmd will?

Answer 1

npm is a .exe just like node is. So you cannot run npm inside node since node is not a real shell but kind of a “JavaScript shell”. And npm install something is certainly not valid JavaScript.