Express.js Guide: The Comprehensive Book on Express.js

The Copmrehensive Book on Express.js

The in-depth, detailed, hand-on manual on Express.js, the most popular Node.js framework. Will get you up and running fast and save you time. Understand the concepts, learn the best practices. Become an Express.js expert today.

Express.js API reference, quick start guides, 20+ meticulously explained examples and tutorials — over 270 pages with more than 60 illustrations.

• Quick Start
• The Interface
• TIps and Tricks
• Tutorials and Examples

Why

Express.js is the most popular Node.js web framework yet. As of this writing (September of 2013), there are no books that are solely dedicated to it. Its official website has bits of insights for advanced Node.js programmers. However, I found that many people — including those who go through HackReactor7 program and come to my Node.js classes at General Assembly and pariSOMA — are interested in a comprehensive resource. The one that would cover all the different components of Express.js work together in a real production-like application. The goal of Express.js Guide is to become such resource.

What This Book is

Express.js Guide is a concise book on one particular library. This book contains Express.js API 3.3.58 description, the best practices on code organization and patterns, real-world examples of web apps. The topics include but not limited to middleware, command-line interface and scaffolding, ren- dering templates, extracting params from dynamic URLs, parsing payloads and cookies, managing authentication with sessions, error handling and prepping apps for production.

For more details and for what exactly the book covers, please refer to the Table of Contents.

What This Book is Not

This book is not an introduction to Node.js, nor is it a book that covers all aspects of building a modern day web application, e.g., websockets, databases and (of course) front-end development.

Keep in mind that readers also won’t find in Express.js Guide a resource for learning programming and/or JavaScript fundamentals.

You might want to take a look at Rapid Prototyping with JS9 for the introduction to Node.js, MongoDB and front-end development with Backbone.js.

In the real-world and especially in Node.js development, due to its modularized philosophy, we seldom use just a single framework. In the book, we have tried to stick only to Express.js and leave everything else out as much as possible, without compromising the usefulness of examples. Therefore, we intentionally left out some important chunks of web developments, for example databases, authentication and testing. Although these elements are present in tutorials and examples, they’re not explained in detail. For those materials, you could check books in the Related Reading and Resources section at the end of the book.

Who This Book is For

This book is for people fluent in programming and front-end JavaScript. In addition, to get the most benefits, readers must be familiar with basic Node.js concepts like process and global, and know core modules, including streams, clusters and buffer type.
If you’re thinking of starting a Node.js app, or of rewriting an existing one, and your weapon of choice is Express.js — this guide is for you! It will answer most of your “how” and “why” questions.

More information and other packages: expressjsguide.com

Table of Contents

Part I Quick Start
Chapter 1. What is Express.js?
Chapter 2. How Express.js Works
Chapter 3. Installation
Chapter 4. Hello World Example
Chapter 5. CLI
Chapter 6. Watching for File Changes
Chapter 7. MVC Structure and Modules

Part II The Interface
Chapter 8. Configuration
Chapter 9. Settings
Chapter 10. Environments
Chapter 11. Applying Middleware
Chapter 12. Types of Middleware
Chapter 13. Different Template Engines
Chapter 14. Extracting Parameters
Chapter 15. Routing
Chapter 16. Request Handlers
Chapter 17. Request
Chapter 18. Response
Chapter 19. Error Handling
Chapter 20. Running an App

Part III Tips and Tricks
Chapter 21. Abstraction
Chapter 22. Using Databases in Modules
Chapter 23. Keys and Passwords
Chapter 24. Streams
Chapter 25. Redis
Chapter 26. Authentication
Chapter 27. Multi-Threading with Clusters
Chapter 28. Consolidate.js
Chapter 29. Stylus, LESS and SASS
Chapter 30. Security
Chapter 31. Socket.IO
Chapter 32. Domains

Part IV Tutorials and Examples
Chapter 33. Instagram Gallery
Chapter 34. Todo App
Chapter 35. REST API
Chapter 36. HackHall