Book Image

Express Web Application Development

By : Hage Yaaapa
Book Image

Express Web Application Development

By: Hage Yaaapa

Overview of this book

Express is a minimal and flexible node.js web application framework, providing a robust set of features for building single and multi-page, and hybrid web applications. It provides a thin layer of features fundamental to any web application, without obscuring features that developers know and love in node.js. "Express Web Application Development" is a comprehensive guide for those looking to learn how to use the Express web framework for web application development. Starting with the initial setup of the Express web framework, "Express Web Application Development" helps you to understand the fundamentals of the framework. By the end of "Express Web Application Development", you will have acquired enough knowledge and skills to create production-ready Express apps. All of this is made possible by the incremental introduction of more advanced topics, starting from the very essentials. On the way to mastering Express for application development, we teach you the more advanced topics such as routes, views, middleware, forms, sessions, cookies and various other aspects of configuring an Express application. Jade; the recommended HTML template engine, and Stylus; the CSS pre-processor for Express, are covered in detail. Last, but definitely not least, Express Web Application Development also covers practices and setups that are required to make Express apps production-ready.
Table of Contents (15 chapters)
Express Web Application Development
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Index

Data in named segments


We were introduced to named segments in Chapter 3, Understanding Express Routes. It needs a special mention in this chapter because it is one of the most common media for sending data to the server, along with forms and cookies.

In named segments, we create routes with segments in the URL marked as placeholders for values. When such a route is accessed, the values of the placeholders are available in variables named after the placeholders. This feature enables queries to look neater by making them look like regular URLs.

Here is a URL with data contained in a query string:

http://localhost:3000/user?id=89

The preceding URL can be converted to a cleaner-looking URL using named parameters:

http://localhost:3000/user/89

Reading data

Named segment values are available in the req.params object after we create the appropriate routing.

The following route is defined to work with the http://localhost:3000/user/89 URL:

app.get('/user/:id', function(req, res) {
  console.log('User ID...