I am new to NodeJS and currently working on a NodeJS API project that is hosted on Render with node_env in production.
However, when running the project in a cloud environment, I encountered the following error:
"Error: Cannot find module 'morgan'"
This seems to be due to a missing dev dependency library.
Initially, I set up the hosting platform's build command to install libraries using npm install, but then switched to npm install --dev which resolved the issue.
My questions are:
- As my code contains both prod and dev environments, I have used if statements to disable dev code during production. However, I still need to install dev dependencies when hosting the server. What is the best practice for managing dev and prod environments in a NodeJS API?
- Is there a way to avoid installing dev dependencies in the production environment?
Package.json
"name": "bnndirect_api",
"version": "1.0.0",
"description": "",
"main": "server.js",
"scripts": {
"test": "echo \"Error: no test specified\" && exit 1",
"dev": "nodemon server"
},
"author": "",
"license": "ISC",
"dependencies": {
"cors": "^2.8.5",
"dotenv": "^16.3.1",
"express": "^4.18.2",
"express-mongo-sanitize": "^2.2.0",
"express-rate-limit": "^7.1.5",
"helmet": "^7.1.0",
"hpp": "^0.2.3",
"perfect-express-sanitizer": "^1.0.13"
},
"devDependencies": {
"morgan": "^1.10.0",
"nodemon": "^3.0.2"
}
}
Snippet of dev code in server.js utilizing the 'morgan' library
const morgan = require("morgan");
// DEV LOGGING MIDDLEWARE
if (process.env.NODE_ENV ===
"development") {
app.use(morgan("dev"));
}