Setting Up Our First Node.js Server

Lecture 233:- Setting Up Our First Node.js Server

Great! Let's get started with setting up our first Node.js server.

First, create a new folder for your project, and navigate to it in your terminal.

Next, we will create a new file server.js inside this folder.

Open the server.js file in your text editor, and let's begin writing our server code.

First, we need to require the built-in http module in Node.js. We will use this module to create a web server. Add the following code at the top of the server.js file:

javascriptCopy code

const http = require('http');

Next, we need to create a server instance. We can do this by calling the http.createServer() method. This method takes a function as an argument, which will be called every time a request is made to our server.

javascriptCopy code

const server = http.createServer((req, res) => {  // request handling logic });

Inside the function that we pass to createServer(), we will define the logic for how our server will handle requests. This function takes two arguments: req (short for request) and res (short for response).

The req object contains information about the incoming request, such as the request URL, headers, and any data that was sent with the request.

The res object contains methods for sending the response back to the client.

Let's add a simple response to our server code. Inside the request handling function, add the following code:

javascriptCopy code

res.write('Hello World!'); // write a response to the client res.end(); // end the response

This will send the string "Hello World!" as the response to any request that our server receives.

Finally, we need to tell our server to listen for incoming requests. We can do this by calling the listen() method on our server object. We need to specify a port number on which our server will listen for requests.

javascriptCopy code

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

This will start our server and listen for incoming requests on port 3000. When the server starts listening for requests, the callback function passed to listen() will be executed, and we will see the message "Server is listening on port 3000" in our console.

That's it! We have just created our first Node.js server. To start the server, run the following command in your terminal:

Copy code

node server.js

This will start the server, and you should see the message "Server is listening on port 3000" in your console. Now, open your browser and go to http://localhost:3000. You should see the message "Hello World!" displayed in your browser.