Installing Node.js on Ubuntu

In this post, we are going to see how to install Node.js (a server side Javscript engine) on Ubutntu. Installing Node.js on Ubuntu is straightforward.

Open a terminal window and enter the following command.

$ sudo apt-get install nodejs

The system will show a prompt to download and install the requisite binaries as follows.

After the installation is complete, open an editor and enter the code to create a small test programme. Our test programme will create an http server.

var http = require('http');

http.createServer(function (req, res) {

res.writeHead(200, {'Content-Type': 'text/plain'});

res.end('Hello World\n');

}).listen(1337, '127.0.0.1');

console.log('Server running at http://127.0.0.1:1337/');

Save the program (I saved mine as test_http.js), and open a terminal window and navigate to the place you have saved your test program. Now enter the following command.

$ nodejs test_http.js

That's it. Our test http server is running.

Now lets open a browser and enter the URL for the server.

http://127.0.0.1:1337

There you have it folks. Our first test program with server side javascript with Node.js on Ubuntu.