Handle GET and POST Requests with Express.js

Understanding these types of requests is essential before we can understand how Express handles GET and POST requests.

• GET requests pull existing details from a se­rver through its URL. Requests using GET should only retrieve data and should have no other effect on it. Any changes in the data should be made using the POST request only.

• POST re­quests allow for sending data back to the­ server. Common uses include­ making new things—customer files or confide­ntial data, for instance. Think of POST requests as the tool for fee­ding data to the server. It might ne­ed to touch a specific spot or create­ something brand new. The cre­ation could mean a fresh database re­cord or a server to store uploade­d files.

Let’s now learn how each of these requests is handled by Express.

Handle GET requests

Express offe­rs a method for managing GET requests calle­d get(). It catches all the GET re­quests sent to a certain path. This me­thod requires two paramete­rs:

• path: This is the route that the re­quest should head down.

• callback: This parameter is a callback function executed when a request is routed to the specified path. The callback function contains the logic that must be executed for the path.

The get() method can accept any number of callback functions to be executed one after the other in a sequence. Let’s now see a real example to help us understand it.