What does Express.js do in the MEAN stack?

Question

I have recently have gotten into AngularJS and I love it. For an upcoming project I am looking to use the MEAN stack (MongoDB, Express, Angular, Node). I'm pretty familiar with Angular and I have a modest understanding of the purposes of MongoDB and Node in the stack. However, I don't really understand what the purpose of Express.js is. Is it essential to the MEAN stack? What would you compare it to in a traditional MySQL, PHP, javascript app? What does it do that the other three components can't do?

Also, if someone wants to give their own take on how the four parts of the stack work together, that'd be great.

Solution 1

• MongoDB = database
• Express.js = back-end web framework
• Angular = front-end framework
• Node = back-end platform / web framework

Basically, what Express does is that it enables you to easily create web applications by providing a slightly simpler interface for creating your request endpoints, handling cookies, etc. than vanilla Node. You could drop it out of the equation, but then you'd have to do a lot more work in whipping up your web-application. Node itself could do everything express is doing (express is implemented with node), but express just wraps it up in a nicer package.

I would compare Express to some PHP web framework in the stack you describe, something like slim.

Solution 2

You can think of Express as a utility belt for creating web applications with Node.js. It provides functions for pretty much everything you need to do to build a web server. If you were to write the same functionality with vanilla Node.js, you would have to write significantly more code. Here are a couple examples of what Express does:

• REST routes are made simple with things like
  • app.get('/user/:id', function(req, res){ /* req.params('id') is avail */ });
• A middleware system that allows you plug in different synchronous functions that do different things with a request or response, ie. authentication or adding properties
  • app.use(function(req,res,next){ req.timestamp = new Date(); next(); });
• Functions for parsing the body of POST requests
• Cross site scripting prevention tools
• Automatic HTTP header handling
  • app.get('/', function(req,res){ res.json({object: 'something'}); });

Generally speaking, Sinatra is to Ruby as Express is to Node.js. I know it's not a PHP example, but I don't know much about PHP frameworks.

Solution 3

Express handles things like cookies, parsing the request body, forming the response and handling routes.

It also is the part of the application that listens to a socket to handle incoming requests.

A simple example from express github

var express = require('express');
var app = express();

app.get('/', function(req, res){
  res.send('Hello World');
});
app.listen(3000);

Shows the creation of the express server, creating a route app.get('/'... and opening the port to listen for incoming http requests on.

Solution 4

Express in a Node.js based framework which simplifies writing Server-side Code and Logic.

Adds a lot of utility features and offers additional functionality, and in general, makes things easier.

Express is middleware-based : It basically funnels incoming requests through a chain of middlewares (of steps) where we can do something with the request, read some data from it, manipulate it, check if the user is authenticated or basically send back a response immediately.

This middlewares chain allows us to write very structured code

Solution 5

Express is a nodejs Framework build upon the top of Http module with more usable and better functionalities like easy way to handle routes.

eg: Using HTTP

 var http = require('http');

//create a server object:
http.createServer(function (req, res) {
 res.writeHead(200, {'Content-Type': 'text/html'}); // http header

var url = req.url;
 if(url ==='/about'){
    res.write('<h1>about us page<h1>'); //write a response
    res.end(); //end the response
 }else if(url ==='/contact'){
    res.write('<h1>contact us page<h1>'); //write a response
    res.end(); //end the response
 }else{
    res.write('<h1>Hello World!<h1>'); //write a response
    res.end(); //end the response
 }

}).listen(3000, function(){
 console.log("server start at port 3000"); //the server object listens on port 3000
});

using Express:

var express = require('express');
var app = express();
app.get('/about',function(req,res)=>{
res.write('<h1>about us page<h1>'); //write a response
res.end();
})

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