Running node only works correctly from app directory

Question

When I run node from my app directory, namely:

/var/www/html/
node server.js

The site runs correctly.

When I try to start node from a different directory it runs, but has a wrong root:

#(not in /var/www/html)
node /var/www/html/server.js

What happens is that the correct file is being executed, but all the paths get messed up. Here's an error for example:

GET /auth/login 500 32.511 ms - 2206
Error: Failed to lookup view "login" in views directory "/home/ec2-user/views"

The error is not surprising because the view "login" is not found in

/home/ec2-user/views

but in

/var/www/html/views

How can I correct this behavior?

Clarification:

I am asking this question because I am trying to set up forever to run node on upstart. The service is successfully runs on upstart, but runs into the same problem manually starting the server does.

Answer 1

This will most likely happen if you define paths like e.g. for the template engine like:

app.set('views', './views');

With the . it looks up the directory from where you launched the app.

You need to use __dirname like:

app.set('views', __dirname + '/views');

in order to search the views directory in the script's folder. As also explained here: What is the difference between __dirname and ./ in node.js?