Production ready nodeJS Docker image including the PM2 runtime.

The goal of this image is to wrap your applications into a proper Node.js production environment. It solves major issues when running Node.js applications inside a container like:

• Correct PID 1 signals Handling & Forwarding
• Graceful application Start and Shutdown
• Seamless application clustering to increase performance and reliability

Further than that, using PM2 as a layer between the container and the application brings PM2 features like application declaration file, customizable log system, source map support and other great features to manage your Node.js application in production environment.

You can find more information about the image variants here.

The build process of these images is automatically triggered each time NodeJS's Docker images are built. The build process of these images is automatically triggered each time Docker PM2's GitHub repo master branch is pushed. The build process of these images is automatically triggered each time PM2's GitHub repo master branch is pushed.

If you absolutely need to use an older NodeJS version, check the docker-pm2 Docker hub page for available images. (Not recommended)

Let's assume the following folder structure for your project.

`-- your-app-name/
    |-- src/
        `-- app.js
    |-- package.json
    |-- pm2.json     (we will create this in the following steps)
    `-- Dockerfile   (we will create this in the following steps)

Create a new file called pm2.json with the following content:

{
  "name": "your-app-name",
  "script": "src/app.js",
  "instances": "2",
  "env": {
    "NODE_ENV": "development"
  },
  "env_production" : {
    "NODE_ENV": "production"
  }
}

You can choose the name of the ecosystem file arbitrarily, but we will assume you called it pm2.json in the following steps.

See the documentation for more information about how to configure the ecosystem file.

Create a new file called Dockerfile with the following content:

FROM keymetrics/pm2:latest-alpine

# Bundle APP files
COPY src src/
COPY package.json .
COPY pm2.json .

# Install app dependencies
ENV NPM_CONFIG_LOGLEVEL warn
RUN npm install --production

# Show current folder structure in logs
RUN ls -al -R

CMD [ "pm2-runtime", "start", "pm2.json" ]

See the documentation for more info about the pm2-runtime command.
All options available are listed here.

From your Node.js app project folder launch those commands:

$ docker build -t your-app-name .
$ docker run your-app-name

If you want to Automatically synchronize your application with git add this into your Dockerfile:

RUN pm2 install pm2-auto-pull

Make sure the .git is present in your application source folder.

If you want to Automatically monitor vital signs of your server add this into your Dockerfile:

RUN pm2 install pm2-server-monit

Keymetrics.io is a monitoring service built on top of PM2 that allows to monitor and manage applications easily (logs, restart, exceptions monitoring, etc...). Once you created a Bucket on Keymetrics you will get a public and a secret key.

To enable Keymetrics monitoring with pm2-runtime, you can whether use the CLI option –public XXXX and –secret YYYY or you can pass the environment variables KEYMETRICS_PUBLIC and KEYMETRICS_SECRET.

From your Node.js app project folder launch those commands:

$ docker build -t your-app-name .
$ docker run -e KEYMETRICS_PUBLIC=XXXX -e KEYMETRICS_SECRET=YYYY your-app-name

Make sure that the ports 80 (TCP outbound), 443 (HTTPS outbound) and 43554 (TCP outbound) are allowed on your firewall.

See the troubleshooting in case you encounter any problem.

When the Container receives a shutdown signal, PM2 forwards this signal to your application allowing to close all the database connections, wait that all queries have been processed or that any other final processing has been completed before a successful graceful shutdown.

Catching a shutdown signal is straightforward. You need to add a listener in your Node.js applications and execute anything needed before stopping the app:

process.on('SIGINT', function() {
  db.stop(function(err) {
    process.exit(err ? 1 : 0);
  });
});

By default PM2 will wait 1600ms before sending a final SIGKILL signal. You can modify this delay by setting the kill_timeout option inside your application configuration file.

The --web [port] option allows to expose all vital signs (docker instance + application) via a JSON API.

CMD ["pm2-runtime", "start", "pm2.json", "--web"]

or

CMD ["pm2-runtime", "start", "pm2.json", "--web", "port"]

The documentation can be found here.

• Alexandre Strzelewicz - Unitech
• Simone Primarosa - simonepri

See also the list of contributors who participated in this project.

This project is licensed under the MIT License - see the LICENSE file for details.

License information for the software contained in this image can be found here (pm2) and here (node).