How to Run Node scripts from the Command Line

The command line is a powerful tool for developers and power users alike.

Being able to run commands directly from the command line as opposed to using a GUI is almost like a superpower.

You can use the command line to do anything you can do in a GUI, if the know the right command.

With that being said, you can run JavaScript through Node directly from the command line.

In this post, we'll learn how you can run Node scripts from the command line.

How to run Node scripts from the command line

To begin, let's start off with our example script:

JAVASCRIPT
const string = "123";

console.log(string);

Of course, if we ran this in the browser, we would get:

BASH
123

However, since we want to run it in Node, let's save this as a file called script.js.

Once we did that, open your command line and make sure you're in the same folder as the script.

Assuming you have Node installed, this is how you can run your script:

BASH
node script.js

BASH
123

You simply need to use the node command and pass it the path to the file you want to run.

How to re-run a Node app after changes are made

Now, if you want to keep running this file every time it changes, you can use a module called nodemon for this exact scenario.

Install it locally:

BASH
npm install -g nodemon

Once you've done that, you can instead call nodemon instead of node:

BASH
nodemon script.js

Conclusion

In this post, we learned how to run Node scripts from the command line.

Simply use the node command to run a script or nodemon to watch for changes and re-run it.

Thanks for reading!

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