JS Mates

Create a folder and start an NPM project in the terminal,

npm init

It will show a prompt to add the project details. After finishing all details, it will create the package.json file.

Note: If you want to create a package.json file with the default configuration, then you need to run npm init -y.

Add express package into the project,

npm install --save express

or the shortcut version,

npm i -S express

Create server.js file in the root directory. And add the code for hello world,

// Require Express Js
const express = require('express');
// Create an App using Express
const app = express();
const port = 8080;

// Add a route for the root URL - i.e, `/`
app.get('/', (req, res) => {
  // Send a string - Hello World!
  res.send('Hello World!');
});

// Server will listen to port - 8080
app.listen(port, () => {
  console.log(`App listening at http://localhost:${port}`);
});

Now run the server using the node server.js command. It will run the server on port 8080.

Open the server at http://localhost:8080. It will display the Hello World! string.

What happens in the server.js file?

We used the express JS framework to create a simple web app listening at port 8080. It sends the string Hello World! if we accessed the URL through the browser.

Codesandbox playground will help you to try the code example by trying yourself. But I encourage you to try coding along with the course if you want your learning to stick around you for a long time.

We have used express Js, a node Js framework for the course. But the concept of REST API design will be common for any language or framework.