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Express (JS, of course)

Q: What's ExpressJS?
A: quite possibly the coolest thing to happen to Node.JS... EVAR!  This is awesome news for web developers and programmers.

OK, you're interested now.  So, if you've followed my blog recently, you know that JavaScript is pure awesomeness.  You also know that server-side JavaScript is the way of the future.  Node.JS is the server-side JavaScript environment.  ExpressJS is the library.

Q: So, what do you currently do to write web applications and web services?
A: I write PHP code that runs on an Apache web server (or Lighttpd-FastCGI if you prefer).  The PHP code does cool stuff like session handling, parsing URL-encoded POST responses, talking to a database (probably MySQL), generating HTML, etc.  I use HTML, CSS, and JavaScript for the client-side stuff.

Q: What do you REALLY want to do?
A: Uhhh.... write awesome JavaScript code???

YES!  That's exactly right!

You don't need PHP anymore! (Wha???)  You don't even need Apache/Lighttpd anymore! (OK... well... maybe you do... but not as much)

Introducing Node + Express + Jade + Connect + Stylus!

Here's the breakdown:

  • Node.JS = Server-side JavaScript environment
  • Connect = Web development middleware awesomeness
  • Jade = Generate nice HTML templates and views using JavaScript (compiles to real HTML at runtime)
  • Stylus = Shorthand and awesome CSS (compiles to real CSS at runtime)
  • Express = the glue and toolbox to put everything together
I'll post more info once I experiment with these technologies a bit, but so far, they look awesome!

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