Express
Insanely fast (and small) server-side JavaScript web development framework built on node.js and the V8 JavaScript engine.
- Visit the Wiki for documentation
- Visit the Google Group for discussion
Features (so far)
- Sexy DSL with robust sinatra-like routing
- High performance
- Session support
- Mime helpers
- Redirection helpers
- Nested parameter parsing
- Full test coverage
- Extremely readable specs
- Test helpers (mock requests etc)
- Environment based configuration
- Light-weight JavaScript class implementation via js-oo
- Collections and chainable iterators
- ElementCollections / markup parsing via libxmljs and css selector traversal support via css2xpath
- View support (ejs, haml, sass, etc)
Installation
Currently Express must be cloned (or downloaded), you can use the following command to get rolling and initialize the submodule dependencies:
$ git clone git://github.com/visionmedia/express.git && cd express && git submodule update --init && make app
Or with the gh utility:
$ gh clone visionmedia express && cd express && git submodule update --init && make app
Performance
Extensive performance enhancements have not yet been made, since we are focusing on the framework it-self at the moment.
However if you are interested view the premature benchmarks for Express framework.
Examples
Below is a minimal app example when express is already within your load path.
require('express')
require('express/plugins')
configure(function(){
use(MethodOverride)
use(ContentLength)
set('root', __dirname)
})
get('/hello', function(){
this.contentType('html')
return '<h1>World<h1>'
})
get('/user/:id?', function(id) {
this.render('user.haml.html', {
locals: {
name: id ? 'User ' + id : 'You'
}
})
})
run()
Running Tests
Express uses the JSpec BDD JavaScript testing framework to write and run elegant spec suites. JSpec is frozen to spec/lib and does not require separate installation.
To run all specifications run the following command. This will ensure git submodules are initialized and updated, as well as building test related dependencies such as libxmljs.
$ make test
To run independent specs (which do not require building of external apis etc) use:
$ make test-independant
To run dependent specs (which require building of external apis etc) use:
$ make test-dependant
Run individual suites:
$ node spec/node.js core
$ node spec/node.js mime
$ node spec/node.js routing
...
Express is currently being developed with node --version: v0.1.27
More Information
- JavaScript Extensions & Utilities
- JavaScript Sass
- Scons Build System (some development dependencies rely on this, ex libxmljs)
Contributors
- TJ Holowaychuk (visionmedia) <tj@vision-media.ca>
- Aaron Heckmann (aheckmann) <aaron.heckmann+github@gmail.com>
- Ciaran Jessup (ciaranj) <ciaranj@gmail.com>
- Gareth Jones (csausdev) <gareth.jones@sensis.com.au>
License
(The MIT License)
Copyright (c) 2009 TJ Holowaychuk <tj@vision-media.ca>
Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the 'Software'), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:
The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.
THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED 'AS IS', WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.