expressworks

Learn Express.js from the author of one of the best books on Express.js—Pro Express.js—workshop to teach you basics of Express.js.

This workshop is based on workshopper and inspired by stream-adventure by @substack and @maxogden.

ExpressWorks will provide you with tasks and hints. You write the solutions to these problems. Then, after you wrote a solution as an Express.js app, ExpressWorks will verify your solution to the problem.

Video screencasts which walk you through setup and problems (spoiler alert): YouTube ExpressWorks. 📺💻😁

This workshop is brought to you by Azat Mardan, the author of Practical Node.js (free on GitHub)

Cheatsheet

You might want to download the free Express.js cheatsheet in PDF.

Languages

• English
• Spanish
• French
• Simplified Chinese
• Traditional Chinese
• Korean
• Japanese

Contributors

117  Azat Mardan
55  Azat Mardanov
19  Christophe Porteneuve
10  Tyler Moeller
10  azat-co
 9  RamiroPinol
 8  Elias Meire
 8  Justin Porter
 6  billy3321
 4  Kohei TAKATA
 4  Shim Won
 3  Charlotte Spencer
 3  Harry Moreno
 3  Kaelig Deloumeau-Prigent
 2  Austin Corso
 2  Julian Mazzitelli
 2  Kevin Jayanthan
 2  Robbie Holmes
 2  Thomas Burette
 2  Victor Hugo
 2  intrueder
 1  Alessandro Lensi
 1  Alfredo Miranda
 1  Apricity
 1  Ayman Mahfouz
 1  Chuanfeng
 1  Daniel Geier
 1  Dylan Smith
 1  Eddie Hsieh
 1  Finn
 1  Gabe Fernando
 1  Giuseppe
 1  Hanbyul Jin
 1  Jessie Shi
 1  Johan Binard
 1  Jonny Arnold
 1  Kevin Kuhl
 1  Louis Pilfold
 1  Luis Del Águila
 1  Naitian Zhou
 1  Rich Trott
 1  Richard Kho
 1  Ryan Kois
 1  Timothy Gu
 1  Trevor Whitney
 1  Wojciech Gawronski
 1  brownman
 1  raj
 1  swisherb
 1  tdtsh

Make a PR to see your name here. ;-)

PS: via $ git shortlog -n -s. Please add yourself to the list when making a pull request.

Installation (Recommended)

Recommended global installation:

$ npm install -g expressworks
$ expressworks

If you see errors, try:

$ sudo npm install -g expressworks
$ expressworks

Local Installation (Advanced)

Run & install locally:

$ mkdir node_modules
$ npm install expressworks
$ cd node_modules/expressworks
$ node expressworks

Optional step that gives you the global command (expressworks) in the Terminal/command prompt:

$ npm link
$ expressworks

Usage

$ expressworks

Note: ExpressWorks depends on a local copy of Express being available in your project folder. To do the exercises, make sure to install the Express.js with

$ npm init
$ npm install express@4.11.2

See Offline Setup for more required dependencies.

ExpressWorks understands these commands:

Usage

  expressworks
    Show a menu to interactively select a workshop.
  expressworks list
    Show a newline-separated list of all the workshops.
  expressworks select NAME
    Select a workshop.
  expressworks current
    Show the currently selected workshop.
  expressworks run program.js
    Run your program against the selected input.
  expressworks verify program.js
    Verify your program against the expected output.

Offline Setup

If you would like to setup all node packages beforehand, you can complete this workshop offline. Here are all the modules to install with exact versions that this workshop supports:

$ npm install express@4.11.2
$ npm install pug@2.0.0-beta6
$ npm install body-parser@1.12.0
$ npm install stylus@0.50.0

Note: You need to have node_modules or packagen.json in your project folder before installing dependencies. Run $ mkdir node_modules or $ npm init to create one of them.

Reset

If you want to reset the list of completed tasks, clean the ~/.config/expressworks/completed.json file.

More Information

Check out [Practical Node.js (free on GitHub) and free Express.js cheatsheet in PDF.

Steps

Hello World

Create an Express.js app that runs on localhost:3000, and outputs "Hello World!" when somebody goes to root '/home'.

process.argv[2] will be provided by expressworks to you, this is the port number.

Pug

Create an Express.js app with a home page (/home) rendered by pug template engine, that shows current date (toDateString).

Good Old Form

Write a route ('/form') that processes HTML form input (<form><input name="str"/></form>) and prints backwards the str value.

Static

Apply static middleware to server index.html file without any routes. The index.html file is provided and usable via process.argv[3] value of the path to it. However, you can use your own file with this content:

  <html>
    <head>
      <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="/main.css"/>
    </head>
    <body>
      <p>I am red!</p>
    </body>
  </html>

Stylish CSS

Style your HTML from previous example with some Stylus middleware. The path to main.styl file is provided in process.argv[3] or you can create your own file/folder from these:

  p
    color red

The index.html file:

  <html>
    <head>
      <title>expressworks</title>
      <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="/main.css"/>
    </head>
    <body>
      <p>I am red!</p>
    </body>
  </html>

Param Pam Pam

Create an Express.js server that processes PUT /message/:id requests, e.g., PUT /message/526aa677a8ceb64569c9d4fb.

As the response of this request return id SHA1 hashed with a date:

  require('crypto')
    .createHash('sha1')
    .update(new Date().toDateString().toString() + id)
    .digest('hex')

What's in Query

Write a route that extracts data from query string in the GET /search URL route, e.g., ?results=recent&include_tabs=true, and then transforms outputs it back to the user in JSON format.

JSON Me

Write a server that reads a file (file name is passed in process.argv[3]), parses it to JSON and outputs the content to the user with res.json(object).