How to run the Errsole Log Viewer as a standalone application

By default, Errsole runs its log viewer as a child process of your Node.js application. This setup works well for most use cases—but there are scenarios where you might want to run the log viewer independently.

In this guide, I will walk you through how to run the Errsole Log Viewer as a standalone application.

This guide assumes you know how to set up Errsole. If not, check out the Errsole Setup Guide first.

The example below uses errsole-mysql as the storage, but you can use any supported storage (e.g., MongoDB, PostgreSQL, etc.).

Step 1: Disable the log viewer in your app

In your app (or script), initialize Errsole with enableDashboard: false. This ensures that Errsole only collects and stores logs without starting the log viewer.

Example

errsole.initialize({
  storage: new ErrsoleMySQL(options),
  appName: 'your-app-name',
  enableDashboard: false // Important!
});

Step 2: Create a separate app for the log viewer

On the same machine or a different one, start a separate Node.js app whose only job is to run the log viewer. Just make sure it uses the same storage configuration as your main app.

1. Create a new project directory

mkdir log-viewer
cd log-viewer

2. Initialize a new Node.js project

npm init -y

3. Install the required packages

npm install errsole errsole-mysql

4. Create an index.js file with this code

const errsole = require('errsole');
const ErrsoleMySQL = require('errsole-mysql');

errsole.initialize({
  storage: new ErrsoleMySQL(options), // Same config as your main app
  appName: 'your-app-name',
  enableDashboard: true,              // Enable the dashboard here
  port: 8001                          // Choose any available port
});

5. Start the log viewer app

node index.js

Once running, the log viewer will be accessible at:

Local:
  http://localhost:8001
Remote:
  http://your-server-ip:8001
  http://your-domain:8001

Optional: Configure NGINX Reverse Proxy

If you are hosting your log viewer behind NGINX, you can expose it at a clean URL path like /your-app-name/logs/.

Here is a sample NGINX configuration:

location = /your-app-name/logs {
  return 301 /your-app-name/logs/;
}
location /your-app-name/logs/ {
  proxy_pass http://localhost:8001/;
  proxy_http_version 1.1;
  proxy_set_header Upgrade $http_upgrade;
  proxy_set_header Connection "upgrade";
}

After updating the configuration, reload NGINX to apply the changes:

sudo nginx -s reload

You can now access the Errsole Log Viewer through your domain:

HTTP: http://your-domain/your-app-name/logs/
HTTPS: https://your-domain/your-app-name/logs/

Replace /your-app-name/logs with your desired log path.

That’s it!

With this setup, your Errsole Log Viewer will always be available—no matter what happens to your app. Explore the full documentation here: https://github.com/errsole/errsole.js