Part 1. Intro

Welcome to Express in Action. This is the first of three parts and, like many openers, it introduces the players.

In chapter 1, I’ll identify the characters. Spoiler alert: they are Node.js and Express. The former is a JavaScript runtime—a place where JavaScript code can run—that’s attractive to a lot of developers. Node.js is powerful, but its APIs can, at times, lack power and leave you writing a lot of boilerplate code; that’s where Express struts onto the scene. It fits snugly into Node.js and makes it easier to write web applications. You’ll learn all this and much more in chapter 1.

In chapter 2 you’ll learn what it means for Node.js to be a JavaScript runtime, and you’ll be running JavaScript in Node.js. You’ll build a couple of simple modules and then see what it takes to build a website on the platform. You’ll also learn how to include third-party modules from npm, Node.js’s third-party package registry.

The star of the show, Express, takes center stage in chapter 3. You’ll see how Express sits on top of Node.js, and learn its major features. Express will show you convenience after convenience. We’ll delve deeper into each of these features in subsequent chapters, but by the end of chapter 3, you’ll have all of the core Express knowledge you’ll need.

I hope you are as excited as I to get started!