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How To Use Nodemon To Restart Your Node.js Applications
Restart your web apps automatically and efficiently
If you are developing any Node.js application, nodemon is one of the necessary weapons in your arsenal. Learn how to install and effectively use nodemon to automatically restart your Node.js application on every relevant file change.
Do you want to restart your Node.js web server and save loads of development time? In this article, we are going to see how you can utilize nodemon with any Node.js application easily.
A Quick Intro
Having nodemon to watch your file changes is like having an eagle watching over its prey. On every file save, your Node.js server is automatically restarted for you.
Even nodemon’s slogan says, “Reload, automatically.” It might come as a surprise to you that nodemon can be used with other languages like Python, Ruby, or even Make as well. Nodemon is used as a dependency by more than 1.5 million projects, so it is surely battle-tested. If you are not using nodemon for development, you are missing out.
Let’s go ahead and install nodemon.
How To Install nodemon
Before we install nodemon, we will use a sample app to see nodemon in action. We will use the Node.js MySQL open source application that I used for my Node.js MySQL tutorial. This is a simple quotes REST API built with Node.js and Express.js communication with a MySQL database. Next, we will install nodemon in this sample application.
Like most npm modules, Nodemon can be installed in two ways.
Install nodemon as a global dependency
To install nodemon as a global NPM dependency, we can run the following command:
This will install nodemon as a global dependency. It will also make the nodemon command available on any path you run it on. The advantage is that you don’t need to…
