Spark

Spark is a command-line tool used to start up node server instances written by Tj Holowaychuk and Tim Caswell. It's part of the Connect framework, however can be used standalone with any node server.

NOTE: spark is no longer maintained, for an extensible, and more robust solution check out Cluster.

Features

Spark provides the following options when starting a server.

• Port/Host to listen on
• SSL hosting with specified key/certificate
• Automatic child process spawning for multi-process node servers that share a common port.
• User/Group to drop to after binding (if run as root)
• Environment modes (development/testing/production)
• Modify the node require paths
• Can load any of these configs from from a file (optionally grouped by env)
• Can change the working directory before running the app
• --comment option to label processes in system tools like ps or htop
• Pass arbitrary code or environment variables to the app

Making an app spark compatible

Any node server can be used with spark. All you need to do it create a file called app.js that exports the instance of http.Server or net.Server.

A hello-world example would look like this:

module.exports = require('http').createServer(function (req, res) {
    res.writeHead(200, {"Content-Type":"text-plain"});
    res.end("Hello World");
});

And then to run it you simply go to the folder containing the app.js and type:

$ spark

The output you'll see will be:

Spark server(34037) listening on http://*:3000 in development mode

Where 34037 is the process id. If you want 4 processes to balance the requests across, no problem.

$ spark -n 4

And you'll see:

Spark server(34049) listening on http://*:3000 in development mode
Spark server(34050) listening on http://*:3000 in development mode
Spark server(34052) listening on http://*:3000 in development mode
Spark server(34051) listening on http://*:3000 in development mode

MIT License

Copyright (c) 2010 Sencha Inc.

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.