Building a Web App

Using Node/Express

with Matt Williams and Robert Murray

Exploring Opportunites

Before We Begin:

If you want to follow along you will need to have NodeJs, Postgres, & Postman installed, if you don't, don't worry!

https://github.com/themattwilliams/developer-week

&&

http://slides.com/themattwilliams/developer-week-2017

Objectives:

1. Describe in one sentence the difference between a client and a server
2. Install Node dependencies using NPM
3. Spin up a simple Node server using nodemon
4. Manually test the API with Postman

How Does A Server Work?

What is Node?

Node.js is a platform built on Chrome's JavaScript runtime for easily building fast and scalable network applications

Describe the difference between a client/browser and a server

Your Turn!

Here's what your server will do:

Getting Started

    * package.json
    * app.js
    * routes/
    *   swords.js

We will need:

Run npm init -y inside the root of a newly created application folder or forked repo.

Getting Started

npm install --save express knex pg body-parser

install NPM modules

We're going to need express, knex, pg, and body-parser.

Note: Be sure to use the --save flag so they are added to package.json.

Getting Started

npm install --save -g nodemon

install NPM modules

We will use nodemon to refresh our server after making changes to our files

Getting Started

  "dependencies": {
    "body-parser": "^1.15.2",
    "express": "^4.14.0",
    "knex": "^0.12.6",
    "pg": "^6.1.2"
  }

install NPM modules

After installing these, your package.json should look something like this

Creating A Server

var express    = require('express');
var bodyParser = require('body-parser');

var app = express();

app.use(bodyParser.urlencoded({ extended: true }));
app.use(bodyParser.json());

var swords = require('./routes/swords')

app.use('/api/swords', swords);

app.listen(process.env.PORT || 8080);
console.log('Woot, server started');

Crack open the app.js file to setup our app.

Creating A Server

var express = require('express');
var router = express.Router();

router.get('/', function(req, res) {
  res.status(200).json({ message: 'rawr! you did it!' });
});

module.exports = router

Creating A Server

 We will start our Node app and then send a request

then http://localhost:8080/api/swords

nodemon app.js

Postman

Postman is a tool we can use to test our routes.

Use Postman to make a GET request to http://localhost:8080/api/swords

Objectives:

1. Describe in one sentence the difference between a client and a server
2. Install Node dependencies using NPM
3. Spin up a simple Node server using nodemon
4. Manually test the API with Postman

Creating a Swords Database

To make a database, we'll follow the following steps:

1. Create a SQL database

2. Create a swords table

2. Create a knexfile

 3. Create a module that connects to our database by reading our knexfile

Coming up after the Break!