Express.js
Express.js, also known as Express, is a Node.js web-framework.
It provides access to routing and a rich community of middleware.
The benefit to using JS/TS for your backend is that your full stack is in a single-language.
This also means you can use all of your favorite libraries on npm.
However, since JS is single-threaded, you need to be careful with optimization (i.e. async programming).
Deployment may require running multiple instances of your application even on the same VM.
Getting Started
To create a project, do
npx express-generator --view=pug
or
npm i -g express-generator express --view=pug [dir]
See express starter generator for more details.
- By default, express uses jade for its template engine. This has been replaced by pug.
- If you want to make a typescript project, you can also try express-generator-typescript.
- This is made by a third-party and includes some extra libraries.
Usage
Routing
See Guide: Routing
Database
See Express database integration
Express does not provide any special methods for interacting with databases.
Below are some ways of interacting with databases.
- Sequelize is an object-relation mapping (ORM) for Node. It supports Postgres, MySQL, MariaDB, SQLite, and Microsoft SQL Server.
- TypeORM is another ORM from Node.
- We currently use TypeORM for https://tuneix.com.
- Knex.js is an SQL query builder.
- Objection.js is another ORM built on Knex.js.
Proxies
It is typically recommended to run express behind a proxy (e.g. Nginx) for production.
See guide: behind-proxies for how to configure this such that the client hostname is correct.
app.set('trust proxy', 'loopback');
Libraries
Some common libraries and middleware
- express-rate-limit adds rate limiting.
- csrf adds csrf protection.