Express Routing & Connected API

Using Express Routing

Routing refers to how an application’s endpoints (URIs) respond to client requests
You define routing using methods of the Express app object that correspond to HTTP methods
The application “listens” for requests that match the specified route(s) and method(s), and when it detects a match, it calls the specified callback function
Route paths, in combination with a request method, define the endpoints at which requests can be made
- Route paths can be strings, string patterns, or regular expressions
  - The characters ?, +, *, and () are subsets of their regular expression counterparts
  - The hyphen (-) and the dot (.) are interpreted literally by string-based paths

Router is like a mini express application
- It doesn't bring in views or settings, but provides us with the routing APIs like .use, .get, .param, and route
Only need one dependency, Express
We can call an instance of the express.Router(), apply routes to it, and then tell our application to use those routes
router.use() to define middleware
- This will now be applied to all of the requests that come into our application for this instance of Router
The order you place your middleware and routes is very important
- Everything will happen in the order that they appear
- This means that if you place your middleware after a route, then the route will happen before the middleware and the request will end there
- Your middleware will not run at that point