Disclaimer: Vercel configuration file uses legacy builds and routes properties.
Last week I needed to host a simple Express app somewhere, and I decided to host it on Vercel because of the excellent Developer Experience.
Here are the steps that I needed to do to make it possible:
First, we need to create a project directory. I decided to name it vercel-express
and then change the directory to a newly-created directory.
# create a directory
mkdir vercel-express
# change directory
cd vercel-express
Then we will initialize git and add the node_modules
directory to .gitignore
.
# initialize git
git init
# add the `node_modules` directory to `.gitignore`
echo node_modules >> .gitignore
Next, we need to set up a new package. We are using the -y
flag to skip the questionnaire.
npm init -y
Then we will create an index.js
file and populate it.
# create a new `index.js` file
touch index.js
// ./index.js
const express = require('express')
const app = express()
const port = 3000
app.get('/', (req, res) => {
res.send('Hello, Vercel!')
})
app.listen(port, () => {
console.log(`Express app hosted on Vercel listening at port ${port}`)
})
To run an express app, we need to create a custom vercel.json
config file.
touch vercel.json
// ./vercel.json
{
"version": 2,
"builds": [
{
"src": "./index.js",
"use": "@vercel/node"
}
],
"routes": [
{
"src": "/(.*)",
"dest": "/"
}
]
}
After populating the index.js
and vercel.json
files, we can stage all of the files and commit them.
git add -A && git commit -m "Initial commit"
If you want to change the name for the main branch from master
to main
, simply run the git branch -m master main
command.
For pushing code to the existing repository, follow the following code.
git remote add origin https://github.com/LukasPolak/vercel-express.git
git branch -M main
git push -u origin main
The Vercel config file includes legacy properties, but it works like a charm when writing this. Maybe in the future, I will update the tutorial with the recommended properties.
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