Express

Express is a fast, unopinionated, minimalist web framework for Node.js

You need Node.js installed in order to install Express. For further information on how to install Node.js, please visit our article on Node.js

Installation (basic)

mkdir myexpress
cd myexpress
npm init
npm i express

Other

Custom setup

Normally, the entry point for an Express application is the file server.js, so during Express installation we type server.js instead of the default index.js. We can change the entry point later on in the package.json file by editing the "main": entry and replacing index.js for server.js.

Afterward, we create the server.js file in our Express application root directory.

Running Express

As we created a "dev": script in the package.json file, we can start the server by issuing:

npm run dev

Basic index.js/server.js file content

const express = require('express')
const path = require('path')
const app = express()
const PORT = process.env.PORT || 3000
// Set static foloder
app.use(express.static(path.join(__dirname, 'public')))
// Listening port
app.listen(PORT, () => console.log(`Server running on port ${PORT}`))