W6. NodeJS Express

Question 1

What is the purpose of Express?

Answer 1

Express is a framework for Node.js
Makes it easier to make RESTful APIs
Provides structure for server-side code to mirror structure in URL code we are serving

Question 2

What are 3 benefits of using Express?

Answer 2

1. ) Defines a routing table used to perform different actions based on HTTP Method and URL
2. ) Permits dynamic rendering of HTML pages based on passing arguments to templates
3. ) Makes server code simpler by imposing structure

(also ability to mix static HTML with web pages

Question 3

What is the purpose of Routes?

Answer 3

Allow you to tidy-up directory structure and scale up a web server to industrial-scale structure

Question 4

What are templates?

Answer 4

• static template files
• describe some structure expanded into HTML
• HTML expressed at higher-level using template language
• At runtime, a template engine converts all variables in template into actual values and sends HTML to the client

Question 5

What template engine does Express use by default?

Answer 5

Pug (formerly Jade)

Question 6

Advantages and disadvantages of Pug

Answer 6

Advantages:
- templating allows boilerplate pages to be created that can be specialised
- Good readability - write paragraphs
- indentation (white space) instead of tags for structure
Disadvantages:
- white space indentation is error prone
- cannot use a mixture of template language and HTML, in Pug - only Pug!