Node.js and random port

Sometimes you need to open a random port on your node server. You can of course try a random one to see if it fails, but a npm module makes this easy:

npm install portfinder

var pf = require('portfinder');
var http = require('http');

// If you want to change the first port to check
pf.basePort = 9000; // default is 8000

pf.getPort(function(err, port) {
  if (err) return; // handle error
  http.createServer().listen(port);
  console.log("I'm now listening on port "+port);
});

More information about the module is found at npmjs.com