Web Development with Node and Express, 2nd Edition

Chapter 3. Saving Time with Express

In Chapter 2, you learned how to create a simple web server using only Node. In this chapter, we will re-create that server using Express. This will provide a jumping-off point for the rest of the content of this book and introduce you to the basics of Express.

Scaffolding

Scaffolding is not a new idea, but many people (myself included) were introduced to the concept by Ruby. The idea is simple: most projects require a certain amount of so-called boilerplate code, and who wants to re-create that code every time you begin a new project? A simple way is to create a rough skeleton of a project, and every time you need a new project, you just copy this skeleton, or template.

Ruby on Rails took this concept one step further by providing a program that would automatically generate scaffolding for you. The advantage of this approach is that it could generate a more sophisticated framework than just selecting from a collection of templates.

Express has taken a page from Ruby on Rails and provided a utility to generate scaffolding to start your Express project.

While the Express scaffolding utility is useful, I think it’s valuable to learn how to set up Express from scratch. In addition to learning more, you have more control over what gets installed and the structure of your project. Also, the Express scaffolding utility is geared toward server-side HTML generation and is less relevant for APIs and single-page applications.

While we won’t be using ...