CODEWITHSUNDEEP
node.jsapiexpresscommand-line
ricksanchez
ricksanchez

Reputation: 55

Converting Node.js command line app to web app

So this is more of an open ended question: I've started working with node and I've been creating command line applications for practice. The majority of these apps take command line arguments and make http requests to an API and serve up the results based on the arguments passed. The thing is, I would like these programs to have useful front-end interfaces so that the results are not just display via the command line terminal. Is there an easy way to accomplish this? Is this what Express is useful for?

Upvotes: 0

Views: 1293

Answers (1)

Bob Dill
Bob Dill

Reputation: 1010

perhaps more fully, that's what express is for and that's what routes do for you - so that your browser can be directed to a default (e.g. index.html) page or a specific page or service. If you're rendering basic html pages, stored in an /HTML folder, to the user, then you might have the following kind of code in your app: 

var express = require('express');
var app = express();
app.engine('html', require('ejs').renderFile);
app.use(express.static(__dirname + '/HTML'));

followed by a series of app.get('path/from/browser') and/or app.post('path/from/broswer') statements which tell your nodejs server what to do when various get and post commands are sent to the app.

as your app gets more complex, you may want to consider the router service as a way to structure your application code and associated services.

you also need to start an http server, so the browser can actually talk to the server. You would do that in a very simple way by executing the following code: 

var cfenv = require('cfenv');
var appEnv = cfenv.getAppEnv();
app.set('port', appEnv.port);
var server = app.listen(app.get('port'), function() {console.log('Listening on port %d', server.address().port);});

In this simple example, your app is now using 3 new services: express, ejs, and cfenv. You would use the standard npm install process to get this into your local app so that you can use them. From your application root folder, you would execute npm install --save express, repeating for each of the three new services.

Upvotes: 1

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