Getting Started with Node.js

A Beginners Guide to Node.js, npm, and Express.js

I am currently in the process of learning JavaScript and I finally hit the point where client-side scripting can no longer meet the needs of my application. I was always aware of Node.js and server side scripting but I didn’t truly understand the need for it until I attempted to hide some API keys in one of my client side applications. It quickly dawned on me that I will need to learn a server-side framework if I want to develop anything meaningful.

After doing research, I chose Node.js because it was almost always mentioned as one of the top options for server side JavaScript runtimes. It was marketed as intuitive, scalable, and very popular amongst other developers. It is also used in many big name applications such as Netflix and Twitter.

The goal of this article is to explain the basics of Node.js for a complete beginner. Through explaining it, I aim to teach myself and solidify my understanding. I will also provide an installation and starters guide.

Node.js was first introduced in 2009 by Ryan Dahl, and has quickly risen to become one of the most popular JavaScript runtime environments. Node was so revolutionary because it freed JavaScript from the confines of a browser by creating an environment for it to run on the server-side. Prior to Node, server-side applications needed to rely on a different language for the back-end. Some of these include PHP, Ruby, Java, and ASP.NET/C#. Now with Node, the entire application can be written in 100% JavaScript.

Asynchronous execution vastly increases performance and facilitates application scaling. The event-driven nature can also improve application efficiency because if there is nothing to do, then Node will remain idle.

Any discussion of Node is incomplete without mention of npm (node package manager). npm is the worlds largest, open-source software registry which is installed by default with Node. npm allows users to download from a massive repository of over 800,000 JavaScript packages.

At the heart of every Node project is a package.json file. This is the configuration file for the Node project, and any time additional dependencies are installed from npm, they will be added into the file.

Node is extremely effective as a runtime environment, but it is sometimes difficult to perform basic functions that are necessary to host a functional web application server. This is where Express.js comes in. Express is commonly referred to as the de facto standard server framework for Node and greatly simplifies the process of developing and deploying an application server. Express acts as a middle man to listen for requests made to the server and send them to their correct location. It can then serve different responses based on the content of the incoming requests.

Installing Node.js is fairly easy no matter what operating system you are using. For this example, I will be installing node on my local macOS machine.

To verify installation enter node and then npm followed by the -v flag. This will show what version you just installed. You can also type node to enter into a

Now that the installation is confirmed, its time to build a project. First I created a new directory (my-first-node-project) and entered it. The next step is to enter npm init . It will take you through some prompts and you can accept the defaults. The only one I modified is the description. Once finalized, you should now see the package.json file in your directory.

Now that we have iniated the node project, its time to install Express. To do this we can use npm install express . Now you can see that the package.json was modified to include Express under “dependencies”.

This article aimed to give the reader a very basic introduction to Node.js and show how to initiate their first Node project. Node is an incredible runtime and this article barely scratched the surface its capabilities.

Stay tuned for the next article where I will show how to serve static applications with Node and Express.

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