Change express-generator app port

The express-generator package helps a lot in the development of web applications with Node, because it generates the skeleton of an application.

A small disadvantage is that, when generating the code, we do not know how to change some very basic things, for example, the port on which the app listens (the default port is 3000).

In this post I will show you how to change the port in some app generated by express-generator.

Change port

If you want to change the port directly in the code, go to bin/www, and search for the line that looks like this:

var port = normalizePort (process.env.PORT || '3000');

Change  ‘3000’ for the port you want

Change the port from the command line

A good practice (especially when you want to mount the app in a different environment) is to specify the port as an environment variable.

If you want to do so, before running the app, type the following command in the terminal:

SET PORT=5000

In this way, process.env.PORT will be at the value of 5000 and you can change the port from the operating system.