hoodie-daemon.sh

#!/bin/sh -e

# start:
# call node_modules/hoodie-server/bin/start manually
# pipe stdout & stderr into files
# send to bg
# capture pid
# write pid to pidfile

# stop
# read pidfile
# if no pidfile,
#   say no process
# kill -INT pid # so couchdb can stop gracefully
# rm the pidfile

apphome=/home/hoodie/appname/
pidfile=$apphome/run/hoodie.pid
stdoutfile=$apphome/log/hoodie.stdout
stderrfile=$apphome/log/hoodie.stderr
hoodie_user=hoodie

mkdir -p $apphome/log
mkdir -p $apphome/run

cd $apphome

case "$1" in
  start)
    # if pidfile exists, report and exit
    # expect user to clean up stale pidfile
    if [ -f "$pidfile" ]; then
      echo "Pidfile still exists: $pidfile:"
      cat $pidfile
      exit 2
    fi

    # the command
    sudo -u $hoodie_user \
    COUCH_URL=http://127.0.0.1:5984 \
    HOODIE_ADMIN_USER=admin \
    HOODIE_ADMIN_PASS="$HOODIE_ADMIN_PASS" \
    HOODIE_BIND_ADDRESS="$HOODIE_BIND_ADDRESS" \
    HOME=$apphome \
    node node_modules/hoodie-server/bin/start \
    1>>$stdoutfile \
    2>>$stderrfile \
    &

    pid=$!
    echo $pid > $pidfile
    echo "Started."
  ;;

  stop)
    if [ ! -f "$pidfile" ]; then
      echo "Pidfile $pidfile does not exist."
      exit 3
    fi
    pid=$(<$pidfile)
    kill -INT $pid
    rm $pidfile
    echo "Stopped."
  ;;

  *)
    echo "Invalid or missing command. Try 'start' or 'stop'."
  ;;
esac

For Hoodie to listen to external IP addresses, add the following line to the environment variables section (around line 40):
HOODIE_BIND_ADDRESS=0.0.0.0
(thanks @janl for pointing this out to me!)

Thanks, added!

I made it so that you can do HOODIE_BIND_ADDRESS=0.0.0.0 ./hoodie-daemon.sh

One other small change. This line:
pid=$(<$pidfile)
does not work on my Ubuntu server (no value is assigned to $pid), but this does:
pid=$(cat $pidfile)

this is standard bourne shell, should work on anything from the 90s, possibly earlier :D