Making an Express web app

In this recipe, we're going to combine a lot of previous recipes and throw in a few extra Express features (such as app mounting) to create the foundations of an Express-based web app with integrated administration features.

Getting ready

Let's start fresh. From the command line, we execute the following command:

express profiler

The name of our new app will be Profiler; it will be the profile manager for members of the Node community.

We need to edit package.json using the following code:

{
  "name": "Profiler",
  "version": "0.0.1",
  "private": true,
  "scripts": {
    "start": "node ./bin/www"
  },
  "dependencies": {
    "express": "~4.0.0-rc2",
    "static-favicon": "~1.0.0",
    "morgan": "~1.0.0",
    "cookie-parser": "~1.0.1",
    "body-parser": "~1.0.0",
    "debug": "~0.7.4",
    "jade": "~1.3.0",
    "stylus": "~0.42.3",
    "express-flash": "0.0.2",
    "mongodb": "~1.3.23"
  }
} 

We've set the name to Profiler, adding stylus, mongodb, and express-flash...