MERN: Express JS – Separating Routes

When building a MERN stack application, one of the key components is setting up routes using Express JS. Express is a popular Node.js web application framework that provides a robust set of features for building web applications and APIs.

As your MERN application grows in complexity, it is important to organize your routes in a way that is easy to manage and maintain. One common approach to achieving this is by separating routes into different modules.

Separating routes in Express can help improve code organization, readability, and maintainability. It also allows you to easily add new routes or modify existing ones without cluttering your main application file.

Creating a Routes Module

To separate routes in Express, you can create a new module for each set of routes. This module will contain all the route definitions for a specific functionality of your application. Here’s an example of how you can create a routes module for handling user authentication:

// routes/auth.js

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

// Route for user login
router.post('/login', (req, res) => {
  // Handle user login logic here
});

// Route for user registration
router.post('/register', (req, res) => {
  // Handle user registration logic here
});

module.exports = router;

In the example above, we have created a separate module for handling authentication routes. This module exports a router object that contains the route definitions for user login and registration.

Mounting Routes in the Main Application

Once you have created your routes modules, you can mount them in the main application file using Express’s app.use() method. This method is used to mount middleware functions at a specified path. Here’s an example of how you can mount the authentication routes module in your main application:

// app.js

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

const authRoutes = require('./routes/auth');

app.use('/auth', authRoutes);

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

In the example above, we have mounted the authentication routes module at the ‘/auth’ path in our main application. Now, any requests to ‘/auth/login’ or ‘/auth/register’ will be handled by the authentication routes module.

Conclusion

Separating routes in Express is a common practice that can help you organize and manage your routes more effectively. By creating separate modules for different sets of routes, you can improve code readability, maintainability, and scalability of your MERN applications.

So, next time you’re working on a MERN stack application with Express JS, consider separating your routes into different modules to make your codebase more modular and easier to work with.