Node.js Tutorial with App Router

Node.js is a popular runtime environment that allows you to run JavaScript on the server side. One of the key features of Node.js is its ability to handle asynchronous I/O operations, making it an ideal platform for building scalable and real-time applications. In this tutorial, we will learn how to use the App Router module in Node.js to create a simple web application.

What is App Router?

App Router is a module for Node.js that allows you to define routes for your application. Routes are the URLs that users can access in your web application. With App Router, you can define how your application responds to different URLs and HTTP methods.

Setting up Node.js and App Router

Before we can start using App Router, we need to have Node.js installed on our machine. You can download and install Node.js from the official website. Once you have Node.js installed, you can create a new Node.js project and install the App Router module using npm:

npm init -y
npm install express

Creating a Simple Web Application

Now that we have Node.js and App Router set up, let’s create a simple web application that responds to different routes. Create a new file called ‘app.js’ and add the following code:

const express = require('express');
const app = express();

app.get('/', (req, res) => {
  res.send('Hello, World!');
});

app.get('/about', (req, res) => {
  res.send('About Us');
});

app.listen(3000, () => {
  console.log('Server running on port 3000');
});

In the code above, we create a new Express application and define two routes: ‘/’ and ‘/about’. When a user accesses the root URL of our application, they will see ‘Hello, World!’. When they access the ‘/about’ route, they will see ‘About Us’. Finally, we start the server on port 3000.

Testing the Application

To test our web application, run the following command in your terminal:

node app.js

Now open your web browser and navigate to ‘http://localhost:3000’. You should see ‘Hello, World!’ displayed on the page. If you access ‘http://localhost:3000/about’, you should see ‘About Us’.

Conclusion

In this tutorial, we learned how to create a simple web application using Node.js and the App Router module. We defined routes for our application and saw how to respond to different URLs. Node.js is a powerful platform for building scalable and real-time web applications, and App Router makes it easy to define routes and handle HTTP requests. Happy coding!