Routing is a method that refers to determining how an application responds to a client request to a particular path and a specific HTTP request method (GET, POST, and so on)🤫.

Lets look at Routing💁‍♀️

First of all, let’s take a glance at what routing is🕵️‍♀️:

It’s basically taking the user (or some data) from one place to another. That place is the route.

somewebsite.com/someroute

Routing Methods🤝

You define routing using methods of the Express app object that correspond to HTTP methods;

for example,

• app.get() to handle GET requests and
• app.post to handle POST requests.
• You can also use the app.all() to handle all HTTP methods and
• app.use() to specify middleware as the callback function.

HTTP is a standard protocol for a client and a server to communicate over. It provides different methods for a client to make requests. Each route has at least one hanlder function or a callback. This callback function determines what will be the response from the server for that particular route🤠.

For example, a route of the app.get() is used to handle GET requests and in return send a simple message as a response.

The following function is used to define routes in an Express application −👇

app.method(path, handler)

• app is an instance of express.
• METHOD is an HTTP request method, in lowercase.
• PATH is a path on the server.
• HANDLER is the function executed when the route is matched.

This METHOD can be applied to any one of the HTTP verbs – get, set, put, delete. An alternate method also exists, which executes independently of the request type.

The path is the route at which the request will run.

Handler is a callback function that executes when a matching request type is found on the relevant route.

For example,

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

app.get('/hello', function(req, res){
   res.send("Hello World!");
});

app.listen(3000);

If we run our application and go to localhost:3000/hello, the server receives a get request at route "/hello", our Express app executes the callback function attached to this route and sends "Hello World!" as the response.

Get Information with specific id from the router

app.get('/:id', (req, res) => {
  res.send(`Recieved request for ${req.id}`)
})

Routing Paths🛣️

A routing path is a combination of a request method to define the endpoints at which requests can be made by a client. Route paths can be strings, string patterns, or regular expressions.

Let us define two more endpoints in our server-based application.

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

1. Consider the above code as a bare minimum website that has ✌️ two endpoints, /home and /about.

2. If a client makes a request for the home page, it will only respond with Home Page and on /about it will send the response: About Page.

3. We are using the res.send function to send the string back to the client if any one of the two routes defined is selected.

Amazing!😃

Further 💢

You can learn everything you need to know about routing in the Express guide, and there are a lot of handy things!

I hope this article was helpful to you😁. If it was, please leave a comment and clap it up!

Happy coding… Or happy routing, I guess!🥰