When working on Node.js projects, one common challenge is the need to constantly restart your application whenever changes are made to the code. This can be time-consuming and disrupt your workflow. Fortunately, there's a handy tool called PM2 that can help streamline this process by automatically reloading your Node.js project whenever changes are detected.
PM2 is a popular process manager for Node.js applications that offers a variety of useful features, including the ability to automatically restart your application when changes are made. In this article, we'll walk you through the steps to set up automatic reloading of your Node.js project using PM2.
Step 1: Install PM2
Before you can start using PM2 to automatically reload your Node.js project, you'll need to install it. You can do this using npm by running the following command:
npm install pm2 -g
This command will install PM2 globally on your system, making it accessible from anywhere on your machine.
Step 2: Start your Node.js project with PM2
Once you have PM2 installed, navigate to the root directory of your Node.js project in your terminal and start your application with PM2 by running the following command:
pm2 start your_app.js
Replace "your_app.js" with the name of your main Node.js application file.
Step 3: Enable watch and autoreload features
To enable the watch and autoreload features of PM2, you can use the following command:
pm2 start your_app.js --watch
This command tells PM2 to watch for changes in your project files and automatically restart your application whenever a change is detected.
Step 4: Verify automatic reloading
To test if automatic reloading is working correctly, make a small change in your code, save the file, and observe if PM2 detects the change and automatically restarts your Node.js project.
Step 5: Customize configuration
PM2 offers various configuration options that you can customize to suit your specific needs. For example, you can specify which files or directories to watch, exclude certain files, set the interval for checking for changes, and more. You can find detailed documentation on the PM2 website to explore these options further.
By following these simple steps, you can save time and streamline your development workflow by setting up automatic reloading of your Node.js project using PM2. This handy feature will help you focus on writing code without the need to constantly restart your application manually. Happy coding!