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Creating routes

You may want to make prototypes that are more complex than simple HTML files. For example, you may want to respond to input from a form, and show different pages based on answers given by the user.

To do this you will need to create 'routes' - rules for the server to respond to certain URLs.

For example, with a route of /sample the URL is:

http://localhost:3000/sample

All routes for the application are kept in the routes.js file. They follow this format:

verb(route, callback(request, response) {
    response.render(template, data);
});

Let's break this down into bits:

  • verb : the type of request ('get' or 'post')
  • route : the route section of the URL as explained above
  • callback : a function that contains the code executed when that route is requested
  • request : the 1st parameter sent to the callback, an object representing the HTTP request made
  • response : the 2nd parameter sent to the callback, an object representing the HTTP response that will be sent
  • response.render : method of the response object used to create a page to send back to the browser that made the request
  • template : the 1st parameter sent to response.render, the name of the template file used to render the page, minus its .html extension
  • data : [optional] the 2nd parameter sent to response.render, an object containing variables to send into the template

So as an example, a request for the URL http://localhost:3000/examples/template-data has this route:

router.get('/examples/template-data', function(req, res) {
    res.render('examples/template-data', { 'name' : 'Foo' });
});

We are saying that for a get request for the /template-data route we should run the code:

res.render('examples/template-data', { 'name' : 'Foo' });

This is the render method of the res parameter being run with two parameters:

  • the template called template-data
  • the data object { 'name' : 'Foo' }

Template files are found this way: /views/ + template parameter + .html. The sample template therefore points to the /views/examples/template-data.html file.

In the same way, the template /examples/hello_world would point to the /examples/hello_world.html file.

Read the Express documentation for routes