Simple node server

Gruntfile.js

module.exports = function(grunt) {
  grunt.initConfig({

    // configure nodemon
    nodemon: {
      dev: {
        script: 'server.js'
      }
    }

  });

  // load nodemon
  grunt.loadNpmTasks('grunt-nodemon');

  // register the nodemon task when we run grunt
  grunt.registerTask('default', ['nodemon']);  
};

package.json

{
  "name": "express-testing",
  "main": "server.js",
  "dependencies": {
    "body-parser": "^1.4.3",
    "express": "^4.5.1",
    "mongoose": "^3.8.12",
    "compression": "^1.0.8"
  }
}

server.js

var express     = require('express')
var compression = require('compression')
var app         = express()
var bodyParser  = require('body-parser')

app.use(compression())                               // use gzip encoding
app.use(bodyParser.urlencoded({ extended: false }))  // parse application/x-www-form-urlencoded
app.use(bodyParser.json())                           // parse application/json

var port = process.env.PORT || 8080

// serve static HTML from public directory
app.use(express.static(__dirname + "/public"))

// configure router
var router = express.Router()
router.get('/', function(req, res) {
    res.json({ message: 'APIs go here!' })	
})

// all of our API routes will be prefixed with /api
app.use('/api', router)

app.listen(port)
console.log('Listening on port ' + port)

Basic Node/Express Server

Make sure node and npm are installed. If grunt is not installed, install it now.

$ npm install -g grunt-cli

Install dependencies

$ npm install

Run server

$ grunt