How to install and configure a Node JS evironment
In this manual, we will teach you how to easily install a Node JS environment that has both Node and the "NPM" package manager, one of the fundamental components of any Node JS environment.
Please, remember that this manual has been written, specifically, for the distribution and version Ubuntu 18.04. The steps could change for other versions or distributions, although they should be very similar for those distributions based on Debian.
1. We update the list of packages
We use the "apt-get update" command to update the list of packages and ensure that we always download the latest version of the available packages.
apt-get update
2. Download and install nodejs and npm using the package manager
Next, we must install these two packages: nodejs and npm. Nodejs refers to the runtime environment that will allow us to execute code written in Javascript on the server. On the other hand, npm is the acronym of the "Node Packet Manager". We will use npm to install, manage and remove Node JS packages and libraries.
apt-get install nodejs npm
3. We verify the installation
To verify the installation, we will check both the version of nodejs and the one of npm.
We will do it with the following commands:
nodejs --version
npm --version
If these commands run without error and show us the version of the installation, then we will have correctly installed nodejs and npm.
4. Run your first Javascript program on the server with Node JS
Finally, we will create a small "Hello World" program to demonstrate the functioning of Node JS. First of all, we will create a text file, for example, with the 'nano' editor.
nano programa.js
Then copy and paste the code that we show you below:
console.log ("Hello, world!");
Save the file with the key combination CTRL + O and finally execute the program as follows:
node programa.js
It is done!
If you have correctly followed the steps in this tutorial, you will have successfully installed Node JS and NPM, as well as writing a small "Hello World" program to verify its operation.