Handle GET and POST Requests with Express.js
Learn to implement GET and POST routes to accept incoming requests using Express.js.
We'll cover the following
Understanding these types of requests is essential before we can understand how Express handles GET and POST requests.
GET requests pull existing details from a server through its URL. Requests using GET should only retrieve data and should have no other effect on it. Any changes in the data should be made using the POST request only.
POST requests allow for sending data back to the server. Common uses include making new things—customer files or confidential data, for instance. Think of POST requests as the tool for feeding data to the server. It might need to touch a specific spot or create something brand new. The creation could mean a fresh database record or a server to store uploaded files.
Let’s now learn how each of these requests is handled by Express.
Handle GET requests
Express offers a method for managing GET requests called get()
. It catches all the GET requests sent to a certain path. This method requires two parameters:
path
: This is the route that the request should head down.callback
: This parameter is a callback function executed when a request is routed to the specifiedpath
. The callback function contains the logic that must be executed for thepath
.
The get()
method can accept any number of callback functions to be executed one after the other in a sequence. Let’s now see a real example to help us understand it.
Get hands-on with 1200+ tech skills courses.