Running in Production

Starting the App

export NODE_ENV=production
npm install --production
node app.js

Use a process manager like PM2 to keep your app running and restart on crashes:

pm2 start app.js --name myproject

Configuration

In production, the .env file is not loaded. Environment variables must be set in the system environment (shell, Docker, PM2 ecosystem file, etc.).

An environment-specific config file app/config-production.js is loaded on top of the base app/config.js:

// app/config-production.js
module.exports = (config) => {
  config.cache.redis.db = 1;
};

Production Defaults

Setting	Value
View caching	Enabled
Static file cache	1 year (max-age)
DB connection pool	10 connections
Gzip compression	Enabled (>1KB)
x-powered-by header	Disabled

Error Handling

Igo catches errors at three levels:

1. Express request errors — logged, error page returned (500)
2. Unhandled promise rejections — caught if within a request context
3. Uncaught exceptions — logged, then process.exit(1) after 1s (lets PM2 restart)

URIError (malformed URLs) returns a 404 silently. SyntaxError (bad JSON) returns a 500 without notification.

Error Emails

Errors can be sent by email to the admin. Email throttling prevents spam during crash loops:

• Max 3 emails per unique error within 1 minute
• After 3 emails, the error is silenced for 5 minutes

Configure the crash email recipient (string or array):

// app/config.js
config.mailcrashto = 'admin@example.com';
// or: config.mailcrashto = ['admin@example.com', 'ops@example.com'];

Logging

Igo uses Winston for logging. The log level is controlled via LOG_LEVEL:

export LOG_LEVEL=warn

Output format: ${timestamp} ${level}: ${message}

Email

Igo integrates Nodemailer with MJML and Dust templates.

Templates are located in views/emails/ as .mjml or .dust files:

const { mailer } = require('@igojs/server');

await mailer.send('welcome', {
  to:   'user@example.com',
  name: 'John',
});

This renders views/emails/welcome.mjml (or .dust), translates the subject via i18next key emails.welcome.subject, and sends the email.

Configure SMTP via environment variables: SMTP_HOST, SMTP_PORT, SMTP_USER, SMTP_PASSWORD.

Assets

In production, Webpack outputs minified bundles with content-hash filenames to public/dist/. The manifest file webpack-assets.json maps entry names to their hashed filenames.

Build assets before deploying:

npx webpack --mode production