Remix App Server

Remix is designed for you to own your server, but if you don't want to set one up you can use the Remix App Server instead. It's a production-ready, but basic Node.js server built with Express. If you find you want to customize it, use the @remix-run/express adapter instead.

remix-serve <server-build-path>

Depending on process.env.NODE_ENV, the server will boot in development or production mode.

The server-build-path needs to point to the serverBuildDirectory defined in remix.config.js.

Because only the build artifacts (build/, public/build/) need to be deployed to production, the remix.config.js is not guaranteed to be available in production, so you need to tell Remix where your server build is with this option.

In development, remix-serve will ensure the latest code is run by purging the require cache for every request. This has some effects on your code you might need to be aware of:

• Any values in the module scope will be "reset"

  // this will be reset for every request because the module cache was
  // cleared and this will be required brand new
  const cache = new Map();
  
  export async function loader({ params }: LoaderArgs) {
    if (cache.has(params.foo)) {
      return json(cache.get(params.foo));
    }
  
    const record = await fakeDb.stuff.find(params.foo);
    cache.set(params.foo, record);
    return json(record);
  }
  

  If you need a workaround for preserving cache in development, you can store it in the global variable.

  // since the cache is stored in global it will only
  // be recreated when you restart your dev server.
  const cache = () => {
    if (!global.uniqueCacheName) {
      global.uniqueCacheName = new Map();
    }
  
    return global.uniqueCacheName;
  };
  
  export async function loader({ params }: LoaderArgs) {
    if (cache.has(params.foo)) {
      return json(cache.get(params.foo));
    }
  
    const record = await fakeDb.stuff.find(params.foo);
    cache.set(params.foo, record);
    return json(record);
  }
  

• Any module side effects will remain in place! This may cause problems, but should probably be avoided anyway.

  import { json } from "@remix-run/node"; // or cloudflare/deno
  
  // this starts running the moment the module is imported
  setInterval(() => {
    console.log(Date.now());
  }, 1000);
  
  export async function loader() {
    // ...
  }
  

  If you need to write your code in a way that has these types of module side-effects, you should set up your own @remix-run/express server and a tool in development like pm2-dev or nodemon to restart the server on file changes instead.

In production this doesn't happen. The server boots up and that's the end of it.