Exercise: Building an Express.js Server

Use what you've learned in this chapter to complete this coding exercise.

We'll cover the following

Problem statement

The web application relies heavily on its server. Whenever a client sends a request, the server plays a vital role in processing it. In this exercise, your objective is to create a server using Express.js to set up the fundamental structure of a web application. This server should excel in handling API requests and rendering HTML pages. The detailed project specifications are outlined below.

API routing

  • Create an API route named /api/hello that returns a JSON response.

  • Ensure that the API route is correctly configured to handle HTTP requests.

  • This route is typically used for serving API data. You can choose any message you want to include in the JSON response.

Express middleware

  • Implement Express middleware for error handling.

  • Create a middleware to handle server-side errors and respond with a 500 status code and an error message.

  • Create a custom error page named 500.html to manage server errors. If your application faces an internal error, this page should handle the situation gracefully and present a message 500 - Server-side Error Occurred.

  • Implement a middleware to handle 404 errors and respond with a 404 status code and a 404 - Page Not Found message.

  • You should create a custom 404.html error page that will be used in the event that a user navigates to a route that doesn’t exist in your application. This page should inform the user that the requested page was not found and may include a message or options for navigating back or to other parts of the application.

Server initialization

  • Create an HTTP server using express() to serve your Express.js application.

  • Ensure the server listens on the port 3000 and logs a message to the console when it’s ready.

  • Establish error handling within the server.js file, and specify how the server should react when encountering errors or 404 situations.

  • Set up error handling in the server.js file, and define the server’s response when it encounters internal server errors (HTTP 500).

Try it yourself 

Click the “Run” button below to execute the code. Once the execution is completed, observe the output by navigating to the link provided at the bottom of the playground.

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