I am making a small website for a buddy but he only has a Webserver from hostinger, for his website I want to use a Node.js Package. Is it still possible to use this hosting service if I just point the URL to the index.html file? Or does the javascript not work anymore if I use Node.js?
2 Answers
It depends on the package and what you want to do with it.
Node.js can be used to run server-side JavaScript. If you need to run server-side JavaScript then you need a hosting service that supports it. A service that supports only static files will not suffice.
The term “a Node.js package” might refer to a package available via NPM. Some such packages require Node.js (in which case see the previous paragraph). Others will run client-side in the browser. Typically, if you are using such a package in client-side code you will use a bundler (such as Webpack or Parcel) to convert your program (which imports said package) for use in browsers.
Some websites are generated programatically at build time and the resulting static files uploaded to a static hosting site. Node.js can be used to do that generation. It is, for example, the usual means by which sites using Gatsby.js are built.
tl'dr: Most likely not.
If the plan your friend has does not offer support Node.js you will not be able to use such package, but it will be hard to say for sure without knowing exactly the plan your friend has.
Webserver usually means static content (HTML, CSS and JS) hosting, and serving to the browser as-is. In this case no actual processing is done on the server - which is what node.js is for.
You could use other browser npm packages (or isomorphic ones, that support Node.js and browser environments), but in the case you described you won't be able to use node specific packages.
According to Hostinger's website, you can only use node.js if you are on VPS plan.
EDIT: It is worth mentioning that you could use a node package if you use it locally to generate or preprocess the assets before putting it in a webserver. But in this case the package will be executing in your machine instead of the server, during build time (not run time).
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