HTTP Server

One of the necessary steps to prepare your Custom Application for a deployment is to create a production build. If you decide to host your Custom Application in a Node.js runtime environment and do not intend to host your Custom Application statically, you can use our pre-configured HTTP server.

This section helps prepare your Custom Application for running it in an HTTP server.

Prerequisites

Before you get started, you need to do the following:

Configure your Custom Application.
Create a production build of your Custom Application.

NPM package

A pre-configured NPM package @commercetools-frontend/mc-http-server is available for running the Custom Application as a Node.js HTTP server.

The server handles the necessary requests to serve the Custom Application. When the server starts it:

Compiles the index.html.template into the index.html.
Prepares the HTTP response headers, including the custom headers provided in the Custom Application config.

To start the HTTP server simply run:

mc-http-server --use-local-assets

The --use-local-assets option might not be necessary, depending on how and where your Custom Application is hosted. See Serving static assets for more information.

Docker image

A pre-built Docker image (eu.gcr.io/ct-images/mc-http-server) is also available for running the application in a Docker environment:

docker pull eu.gcr.io/ct-images/mc-http-server
docker run \
  -v $(pwd):/etc/app \
  -p 8080:8080 \
  eu.gcr.io/ct-images/mc-http-server

The version of the Docker image is the same as the last release of the merchant-center-application-kit.