Messenger Bot "sleep mode" getaddrinfo

Question

I got a bot made in nodejs (expressjs) and hosted on my private VPS, I encounter a bug with HTTP request made with superagent lib. When there is a long period of inactivity, the nodejs server is like in "sleep mode", and the first request is always an error caught in my try/catch, the error look like this :

I got another bot hosted on heroku but I don't have this error, it seems it's maybe my VPS/Apache proxy ?

After the first request, when I made a new one, it works as expected. It's like my server is in "sleep mode" and the first request tell him to wake up.

Thanks for your answers.

Do a ping request every x minutes (or seconds) to keep your bot alive. — node_modules, Aug 02 '17 at 08:48
But it's a default behavior from the nodejs server in general ? — Paul, Aug 02 '17 at 09:53
Yes, and to prevent that, you may want to read this: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/32882507/nodejs-and-express-server-closes-connection-after-2-minutes — node_modules, Aug 02 '17 at 09:57
Tried and it works great !! No more error ! Cool, a nice things to know. You can post the response, so I can indicate that you have provided the answer. @C0dekid — Paul, Aug 03 '17 at 09:51
Glad it worked! You can find my answer below, have a nice day! — node_modules, Aug 03 '17 at 10:16

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Aug 03 '17 at 10:16

This is a normal behaviour for NodeJS applications. To prevent the server for shutting down your application after inactivity, you can do a ping request every x minutes (or seconds) to keep your bot alive.

You can also use the .setTimeout() function.

server.setTimeout(10*60*1000);

Source: Nodejs and express server closes connection after 2 minutes

Messenger Bot "sleep mode" getaddrinfo

1 Answers1