How to host webservice on bluemix?

Question

I have an HTTP service written in Node.js

var server = http.createServer(function(request,response) {...}); server.listen(listenerPort);

When I deploy to Bluemix how/where do I assign a public endpoint and port#?

Answer 1

Blumix provides an environment variable with the port.

// cfenv provides access to your Cloud Foundry environment

// for more info, see: https://www.npmjs.com/package/cfenv

var cfenv = require('cfenv');

// get the app environment from Cloud Foundry

var appEnv = cfenv.getAppEnv();

server.listen(appEnv.port);

Answer 2

When you are ready to deploy to Bluemix you can use the PORT environment variable accessible by using process.env.PORT. There is also a npm package to help you with parsing Cloud Foundry environment variables like PORT

To decide the host name for your application- The app name will be the default host name. for example cf push myapp will assign you the url myapp.mybluemix.net

You can also assign a host name using the host key in your manifest.yml OR using cf push myapp -n myhostname