Setup cPanel Node.js application to proxy to frontend

So imagine you've got the following:

• Access to cPanel for a shared host with your own domain name
• A frontend written using Next.js, Gatsby.js or something else that requires you to use 'npm start xyz' to run it
• And a desire to have a custom backend to handle fun things like Sockets, authentication, and DB stuff

A simple solution:

• Push the production version of your frontend to Next.js or Gatsby.js using their suggested approach
• Host the backend on your server using cPanel and a custom server.js "application".
• Add some code to server.js to proxy to your frontend URL

I say this is a simple solution, because as you can see below the are very few lines of code required to get this to work. And the beuty of it is that you achieve a nice separation of frontend and backend, and yet present a unified experience to your users.

Let's have a look at that code. Updating server.js to proxy to APP_URL.

var app = require('express')();
const { createProxyMiddleware } = require('http-proxy-middleware');
...
app.use('/', createProxyMiddleware({
  target: APP_URL,
  changeOrigin: true,
}));

That's it!