Part 3. Express in Context

You’ve arrived at the final act of our story: Express in Context.

You spent part 1 of this book learning what Express is and its relationship to Node.js. In part 2 you learned all of Express’s ins and outs—routing, views, middleware, and more.

Now you’ll build on that foundational knowledge. Express is rarely the only tool that you’ll use to build an Express application, and you’ll learn how to integrate it with other tools. Your applications will become real.

Chapter 8 will look at database integration. Most interesting web applications have some kind of persistent data store; maybe they store users or photos or blog posts (or all of those). You’ll learn how to integrate the popular MongoDB database with an Express application.

You want to make your Express applications as robust as possible. One of the best ways is to test them thoroughly, and one of the best ways to test thoroughly is by setting up automated tests. You’ll learn how to do all that in chapter 9.

Chapter 10 takes a look at securing Express applications. There’s a lot more to security than just choosing a strong password—the kinds of attacks that can overtake your applications can be sophisticated and powerful. You’ll learn how to protect yourself against common threats by using helpful Express libraries (and being careful with some parts of core Express).