aka:JavaScript:Express

This note uses the section names of 'Node.js in Action' Chapter 8. However, the content is mostly my original.

• Generating application skeletons
  • Express has its own (scaffold) generator, which you can install by 'npm install -g express-generator.'
    • For the detail see http://expressjs.com/guide.html#executable
• Configuring Express and your application
  • The use case of this section is: you want to change the behaviour of logger according to your app is running on a development environment or a production environment.
  • Express provides a mechanism to achieve this use case, which uses the NODE_ENV system environment variable and the app.configure(). For instance,

    $ NODE_ENV=development node app
    

    app.configure(function() { // This is for all environments.
      app.set('view engine', 'ejs');
    };
    app.configure('development', function() { // This is for development only.
      app.use(express.errorHandler());
    };
    

• Rendering views
  • Express comes without a view engine. You can set up your Express application to use no, one, or multiple view engine(s). For the detail, see http://expressjs.com/4x/api.html#app.engine
  • Some template engines don't implement interfaces to work with Express. But you can use some of them with the help of the consolidate module. https://www.npmjs.org/package/consolidate
  • Here is the list of view engines you can use in Express. (Some require the consolidate module.)

    atpl
    dust
    eco
    ect
    ejs
    haml
    haml-coffee
    handlebars
    hogan
    jade
    jazz
    jqtpl
    JUST
    liquor
    lodash
    mustache
    nunjucks
    QEJS
    ractive
    swig
    templayed
    toffee
    underscore
    walrus
    whiskers
    

• Handling forms and file uploads
• Handling resource downloads