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All right guys. So this module is going to be all about Express. Now Express is a Node framework.
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So do you remember in previous modules, we learned that we could add jQuery onto our Javascript to add
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extra features and make it easier working with Javascript?
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Well, Express does the same thing for Node.
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It's a framework, or basically a bunch of code that somebody else wrote, that adds extra features and
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helps to organize and structure your code, specifically for web applications built with Node.
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Now in the last module we said that Node.js was made to basically liberate Javascript from the browser
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and allow programmers to use Javascript to interact with the computer directly,
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for example on a server. And that means it has a broad scope.
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It's a low level technology that allows you to interact directly with the hardware of the computer.
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Now that means that you can create desktop applications using Node. For example Atom,
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what we've been using so far to edit and write our code, is actually built on Electron which is built
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on Node.
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So the scope of Node.js is really really broad.
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Now Express does something really specific. Now an example of this might be that you could own a single
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Phillips screwdriver and you can screw all the screws you want using it, right? Any type of screw.
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So that's Node.
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It lets you interact with the computer any way you like.
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But, as we know, if you've done a lot of DIY work, screwing in screws manually using a Phillips screwdriver
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can get pretty tiring,
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and you're really at risk of repetitive strain injury, especially if you have a lot of Ikea furniture.
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So that means in certain cases, for specialized uses,
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for example if you're doing a lot of DIY, then you might need a motorized screwdriver.
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And that's basically Express. It was built to make you write less repetitive code when you're building
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web applications, and it's made specifically for web developers.
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So sometimes using Express versus using Node straight out of the box, you're saving yourself 5 to
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10 times the amount of code that you have to write,
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and therefore a lot of time as well. And we programmers hate repetition,
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so Express is really really popular.
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In fact, if you go onto npm.com and you scroll down, you'll see that the most depended upon packages
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include Express. And if you have a look at the State of Javascript, which is this annual survey for Javascript
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programmers, you can see that when they surveyed these people on the back end frameworks, even they talk about
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it.
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People really depend on Express.
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And if you have a look at this graph, you can see that ‘I've used it before, and I would use it again’ is
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massive for Express, whereas it can't really be said for the other sort of frameworks that help you to
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do the same thing.
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So it's a really really big deal in the Node web development community, and this is what we're going
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to be learning in this module.
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Now let's go ahead and build a real server using Node and Express to see how we can get our server to
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start running code on the server side and start doing a lot of the heavy lifting,
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so we learn how to build a proper backend for our web sites.
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So once you’re ready, head over to the next lesson.