Full Stack Web Development - Lab 2: Hello World Web Server in Node

1. Fork the repository to your own Github account.
2. Clone the repository to your own machine.
3. cd to the project directory and run npm install.
4. Run npm test to make sure everything is working.

Running the application

From the command line, run node lib/index.js. That will start a very simple node HTTP server on your machine. Note that the program has to remain running to respond to any web requests; to stop the server, type Control-C (hold down the Control key and then press C).

Making requests to your server

Open Chrome (or your preferred browser) and open the url: http://localhost:8000

• What do you see in the browser? Dig deeper and open the web page source in your browser (in Chrome, it's in View -> Developer -> View Source).
• What do you see in your terminal where the server is running?
• What happens when you request a different path on the server (e.g., http://localhost:8000/another-page)
• Try making your requests in another terminal using the curl command (curl -v http://localhost:8000)

Adding new "pages"

We have received a change request from Product Management. Now, in addition to responding with Hello world! at the base url (http://localhost:8000), our application needs to respond to other urls in the pattern:

• http://localhost:8000/David → "Hello, David!"
• http://localhost:8000/John → "Hello, John!"
• http://localhost:8000/Lee → "Hello, Lee!"

To make this change, update the function inside the http.createServer call in lib/server.js. There are already tests written for this new case in test/server-test.js.

Some useful Javascript to keep in mind:

• request in the function has all the information about the web request that you will need, and request.url specifically will contain the path being requested (/, /David, /John, etc.).

• Strings can be indexed just like arrays:

  var str = "ABCs and 123s";
  str[0] === "A";
  str[1] === "B";
  str[2] === "C";
  str[3] === "s";

• Strings have a function (like arrays have .push and the others) named replace. For its basic usage, It takes two arguments: the string to replace, and the string with which to replace it.

  var str = "ABCs and 123s";
  str.replace("ABC", "XYZ") === "XYZs and 123s";

  More information is available on the replace documentation on MDN.