Order: 2
Area: nodejsdeployment
TOCTitle: Create the application
PageTitle: Create the application
MetaDescription: null
MetaSocialImage: null
DateApproved: 10/5/2017
ShortDescription: null
Create your Node.js Application
In this step, you will create a very simple Node.js application that can be deployed to the Cloud. You will use an application generator to quickly scaffold out the application from a terminal.
Tip: If you have already completed the Node.js tutorial, you can skip ahead to Create the Website.
Install the Express Generator
Express is a very popular framework for building and running Node.js applications. You can scaffold (create) a new Express application using the Express Generator tool. The Express Generator is shipped as an npm module and installed by using the npm command line tool npm.
$ npm install -g express-generator
The -g switch installs the Express Generator globally on your machine so you can run it from anywhere.
Scaffold a New Application
We can now scaffold a new Express application called myExpressApp by running:
$ express myExpressApp --view pug --git
The --view pug --git parameters tell the generator to use the pug template engine (formerly known as jade) and to create a .gitignore file.
To install all of the application's dependencies, go to the new folder and run npm install.
$ cd myExpressApp
$ npm install
Run the Application
Last, let's ensure that the application runs. From the terminal, start the application using the npm start command to start the server.
$ npm start
Now, open your browser and navigate to http://localhost:3000, where you should see something like this:
