- NodeJS, Express, ejs with Multer-middleware
- npm (node package manager)
- npm install express
- npm install ejs
- npm install body-parser
- npm install multer
- npm i nodemon --save-dev
- npm init -y
- Create a folder
exercises_expressthen go to this folder in your terminal and execute:
Exercise 1 (Help)
Install express into your directory with the npm install express command.
In order to open a server on port 3000 (node app.js), create an app.js file and add this content:
const express = require("express");
const app = express();
app.listen(3000, () => console.log("Server running on port 3000"));You can now open http://localhost:3000 in the browser.
If you see an error (Cannot GET /), that is expected behaviour as we haven't defined any get route yet. Still, it means your server is up and running.
Exercise 2 (Help)
In this exercise, you are going to create an index route with the get method.
In app.js, create the get index route and have it output the string 'How are you?'.
const express = require("express");
const app = express();
// respond with "hello world" when a GET request is made to the homepage
app.get("/", function (req, res) {
res.send("How are you?");
});
app.listen(3000, () => console.log("Server running on port 3000"));Exercise 3 (Help)
In this exercise, you are going to create the homepage for your app and serve it on the home route. Create a new directory public and inside it, create a html file called homepage.html and write this content in it:
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en">
<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8" />
<title>Hello</title>
</head>
<body>
<h1>How are you?</h1>
</body>
</html>In app.js, get express to send this file when hitting the route home (at http://localhost:3000/home)
Exercise 4 (Help)
In this exercise you'll get your server to send back some JSON when a PUT request is performed. The JSON will look like this:
{"good" : "yep"}In app.js, get express to send this json when hitting the route home with the method PUT.
Try out your request with curl (or postman):
- Input:
$ curl -X PUT http://localhost:3000/home - Output:
{"good":"yep"}
or
- Input:
$ curl http://localhost:3000/home - Output:
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en">
<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8" />
<title>Hello</title>
</head>
<body>
<h1>How are you?</h1>
</body>
</html>To start with (ejs) templating, create a directory views under the root directory of your project. Add a file with this template in:
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en">
<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8" />
<title>Document</title>
</head>
<body>
<% if (title) { %>
<h1><%= title %></h1>
<% } %>
</body>
</html>Render this EJS code if the user accesses the URL /test-ejs and render this page with Hey as value of title variable. Remember that in app.js, you need to define the directory of your views and the name of the template engine you are using this way:
// Necessary to render ejs-template(s). Keep these lines before the routes for better organisation.
app.set("views", "./views");
app.set("view engine", "ejs");
// First template page
app.get("/test-ejs", function (req, res) {
res.render("pages/test-ejs", { title: "Hey" });
});
Exercise 6 (Help)
We pass an array to our new page /test-ejs2:
{users : ['Bob', 'John', 'Jane' ]}
Create an EJS page that uses the forEach method to list each element.
Exercise 7 (Help)
Create a template with two input:text fields to enter the first and last name and show it on the /test-ejs3 route.
Exercise 8 (Help)
Submit the first and last name with the previous form to /test-ejs3 POST route.
Display in the console (terminal) the result of the POST as a json with fields name and surname.
Exercise 9 (Help)
Create a route of the type /number/1 in file /test-ejs4, where the number will be a variable :id and will be displayed on the page. E.g. on the route /number/1337 we will see:
The number is 1337
Appendix (Help)
Instead of the normal node server start, you can add below to your package.json instead to be able to just run npm start:
"scripts": {
"test": "echo \"Error: no test specified\" && exit 1",
"start": "node app.js"
},
If you are tired of always restarting the server while developing (not production), hot-reloading via nodemon can come to the rescue.
- Install it like this
npm i nodemon --save-dev(it will add a new entry underdevDependenciesin yourpackage.json). - Change the
npm startscript in thepackage.jsonto benodemon app.js. - Now restart the server; your server will automatically reload on file change. To see the newest changes, you'll still have to reload the browser.
- Nodemon is only for development use, that's why it's wise to add another entry to your package.json scripts:
"start-prod": "node app.js". This is the command you are going to run when you app is deployed on a remote host.
Your scripts entry in package.json should now look like this:
"scripts": {
"test": "echo \"Error: no test specified\" && exit 1",
"start": "nodemon app.js",
"start-prod": "node app.js"
}
Exercise 11 (Middleware - i.e. Multer)
Your Mission:
- You need to set-up the back-end to accept a profile picture, save it on your server, and send back the picture itself to the client.
How do I do that?
- Multer is a middleware NPM package for handling multipart/form-data, primarily used for uploading files.
Steps:
- Create a POST route handler for /upload-profile-picture
- Try to set up Multer on your server following the documentation. You’ll have to set a destination storage, and the way you want the filenames to be handled (help , help).
- Pass the middleware to your POST route handler. See if you can console.log(req.file) inside of it. If you can; you’re all set. You might want to implement some error handling logic here in case you don’t have a file and then some logic when you do have a file. Look at the info you get. Check if the file is saved correctly, with the right extension name. Multer removes the filename extension by default, so you need to add it back) help.
- You want to send the picture back to the client for immediate display. You can use
res.send('<p>some html</p>')here help. - You’ll need to use another application level middleware for Express to handle serving static files to the client help.
- For hot-reloading while developing (not production), there is a lib called nodemon, which you can install. You can update your
package.jsonlike below, and you can run with$ npm start. (NB!) Make sure it's just on development. For production you'll need another script which only run node app.js.
"scripts": {
"test": "echo \"Error: no test specified\" && exit 1",
"start": "nodemon app.js"
},
or for a normal node server start, add below to your package.json instead:
"scripts": {
"test": "echo \"Error: no test specified\" && exit 1",
"start": "node app.js"
},