Node Renderer JavaScript Configuration

You can configure the node-renderer with only ENV values using the provided bin file node-renderer.

You can also create a custom configuration file to setup and launch the node-renderer.

The values in this file must be kept in sync with with the config/initializers/react_on_rails_pro.rb file, as documented in Configuration.

Here are the options available for the JavaScript renderer configuration object, as well as the available default ENV values if using the command line program node-renderer.

  1. port (default: process.env.RENDERER_PORT || 3800) - The port renderer should listen to. If setting the port, you might want to ensure the port uses process.env.PORT so it will use port number provided by Heroku environment.
  2. logLevel (default: process.env.RENDERER_LOG_LEVEL || 'info') - Log lever for renderer. Set it to 'error' to turn logging off. Available levels are: { error: 0, warn: 1, info: 2, verbose: 3, debug: 4, silly: 5 }
  3. bundlePath (default: process.env.RENDERER_BUNDLE_PATH || '/tmp/react-on-rails-pro-node-renderer-bundles' ) - path to temp directory where uploaded bundle files will be stored. For example you can set it to path.resolve(__dirname, './.node-renderer-bundles') if you configured renderer from the / directory of your app.
  4. workersCount (default: env.RENDERER_WORKERS_COUNT || defaultWorkersCount() where default is your CPUs count - 1) - Number of workers that will be forked to serve rendering requests. If you set this manually make sure that value is a Number and is >= 1.
  5. password (default: env.RENDERER_PASSWORD) - Password expected to receive form Rails client to authenticate rendering requests. If no password set, no authentication will be required.
  6. allWorkersRestartInterval (default: env.RENDERER_ALL_WORKERS_RESTART_INTERVAL) - Interval in minutes between scheduled restarts of all cluster of workers. By default restarts are not enabled. If restarts are enabled, delayBetweenIndividualWorkerRestarts should also be set.
  7. delayBetweenIndividualWorkerRestarts (default: env.RENDERER_DELAY_BETWEEN_INDIVIDUAL_WORKER_RESTARTS) - Interval in minutes between individual worker restarts (when cluster restart is triggered). By default restarts are not enabled. If restarts are enabled, allWorkersRestartInterval should also be set.
  8. supportModules - (default: env.RENDERER_SUPPORT_MODULES || null) - If set to true, supportModules enables the server-bundle code to call a default set of NodeJS global objects and functions that get added to the VM context: { Buffer, process, setTimeout, setInterval, setImmediate, clearTimeout, clearInterval, clearImmediate, queueMicrotask }. This option is required to equal true if you want to use loadable components. Setting this value to false causes the NodeRenderer to behave like ExecJS. See also stubTimers.
  9. additionalContext - (default: null) - additionalContext enables you to specify additional NodeJS objects (usually from https://nodejs.org/api/globals.html) to add to the VM context in addition to our supportModules defaults. Object shorthand notation may be used, but is not required. Example: { URL, URLSearchParams, Crypto }
  10. stubTimers - (default: env.RENDERER_STUB_TIMERS if that environment variable is set, true otherwise) - With this option set, use of functions setTimeout, setInterval, setImmediate, clearTimeout, clearInterval, clearImmediate, and queueMicrotask will do nothing during server-rendering. This is useful when using dependencies like react-virtuoso that use these functions during hydration. In RORP, hydration typically is synchronous and single-task (unless you use streaming) and thus callbacks passed to task-scheduling functions should never run during server-side rendering. Because these functions are valid client-side, they are ignored on server-side rendering without errors or warnings. See also supportModules.

Deprecated options:

  1. honeybadgerApiKey, sentryDsn, sentryTracing, sentryTracesSampleRate - Deprecated and have no effect. If you have any of them set, see Error Reporting and Tracing for the new way to set up error reporting and tracing.
  2. includeTimerPolyfills - Renamed to stubTimers.

Example Launch Files

Testing example:

spec/dummy/client/node-renderer.js

Simple example:

Create a file './node-renderer.js'

import path from 'path';
import { reactOnRailsProNodeRenderer } from '@shakacode-tools/react-on-rails-pro-node-renderer';

const config = {
  // Save bundles to relative "./.node-renderer-bundles" dir of our app
  bundlePath: path.resolve(__dirname, './.node-renderer-bundles'),

  // All other values are the defaults, as described above
};

// Renderer detects a total number of CPUs on virtual hostings like Heroku or CircleCI instead
// of CPUs number allocated for current container. This results in spawning many workers while
// only 1-2 of them really needed.
if (process.env.CI) {
  config.workersCount = 2;
}

reactOnRailsProNodeRenderer(config);

And add this line to your scripts section of package.json

  "scripts": {
    "start": "echo 'Starting React on Rails Pro Node Renderer.' && node ./node-renderer.js"
  },

yarn start will run the renderer.