Moving to Express 4

Overview

Express 4 is a breaking change from Express 3. That means an existing Express 3 app will not work if you update the Express version in its dependencies.

This article covers:

• Changes in Express 4.
• An example of migrating an Express 3 app to Express 4.
• Upgrading to the Express 4 app generator.

Changes in Express 4

The main changes in Express 4 are:

• Changes to Express core and middleware system: The dependency on Connect and built-in middleware were removed, so you must add middleware yourself.
• Changes to the routing system.
• Various other changes.

See also:

• New features in 4.x.
• Migrating from 3.x to 4.x.

Changes to Express core and middleware system

Express 4 no longer depends on Connect, and removes all the built-in middleware from its core, except express.static. This means Express is now an independent routing and middleware web framework, and Express versioning and releases are not affected by middleware updates.

With the built-in middleware gone, you must explicitly add all the middleware required to run your app. Simply follow these steps:

1. Install the module: npm install --save <module-name>
2. In your app, require the module: require('module-name')
3. Use the module according to its documentation: app.use( ... )

The following table lists Express 3 middleware and their counterparts in Express 4.

Here is the complete list of Express 4 middleware.

In most cases, you can simply replace the old version 3 middleware with its Express 4 counterpart. For details, see the module documentation in GitHub.

app.use accepts parameters

In version 4 you can now load middleware on a path with a variable parameter and read the parameter value from the route handler. For example:

app.use('/book/:id', function(req, res, next) {
  console.log('ID:', req.params.id);
  next();
})

The routing system

Apps now implicitly load routing middleware, so you no longer have to worry about the order in which middleware is loaded with respect to the router middleware.

The way you define routes is unchanged, but the routing system has two new features to help organize your routes:

• A new method, app.route(), to create chainable route handlers for a route path.
• A new class, express.Router, to create modular mountable route handlers.

app.route() method

The new app.route() method enables you to create chainable route handlers for a route path. Since the path is specified in a single location, it helps to create modular routes and reduce redundancy and typos. For more information on routes, see Router() documentation.

Here is an example of chained route handlers defined using app.route().

app.route('/book')
  .get(function(req, res) {
    res.send('Get a random book');
  })
  .post(function(req, res) {
    res.send('Add a book');
  })
  .put(function(req, res) {
    res.send('Update the book');
  })

express.Router class

The other feature to help organize routes is a new class, express.Router, that you can use to create modular mountable route handlers. A Router instance is a complete middleware and routing system; for this reason it is often referred to as a “mini-app”.

The following example creates a router as a module, loads a middleware in it, defines some routes, and mounts it on a path on the main app.

Create a router file named birds.js in the app directory, with the following content:

var express = require('express');
var router = express.Router();

// middleware specific to this router
router.use(function timeLog(req, res, next) {
  console.log('Time: ', Date.now());
  next();
})
// define the home page route
router.get('/', function(req, res) {
  res.send('Birds home page');
})
// define the about route
router.get('/about', function(req, res) {
  res.send('About birds');
})

module.exports = router;

Then, load the router module in the app:

var birds = require('./birds');
...
app.use('/birds', birds);

The app will now be able to handle requests to /birds and /birds/about, along with calling the timeLog middleware specific to the route.

Other changes

The following table lists other small but important changes in Express 4.

Example app migration

Here is an example of migrating an Express 3 application to Express 4. The files of interest are app.js and package.json.

Version 3 app

app.js

Consider an Express v.3 application with the following app.js file:

var express = require('express');
var routes = require('./routes');
var user = require('./routes/user');
var http = require('http');
var path = require('path');

var app = express();

// all environments
app.set('port', process.env.PORT || 3000);
app.set('views', path.join(__dirname, 'views'));
app.set('view engine', 'jade');
app.use(express.favicon());
app.use(express.logger('dev'));
app.use(express.methodOverride());
app.use(express.session({ secret: 'your secret here' }));
app.use(express.bodyParser());
app.use(app.router);
app.use(express.static(path.join(__dirname, 'public')));

// development only
if ('development' == app.get('env')) {
  app.use(express.errorHandler());
}

app.get('/', routes.index);
app.get('/users', user.list);

http.createServer(app).listen(app.get('port'), function(){
  console.log('Express server listening on port ' + app.get('port'));
});

package.json

The accompanying version 3 package.json file might look something like this:

{
  "name": "application-name",
  "version": "0.0.1",
  "private": true,
  "scripts": {
    "start": "node app.js"
  },
  "dependencies": {
    "express": "3.12.0",
    "jade": "*"
  }
}

Process

Begin the migration process by installing the required middleware for the Express 4 app and updating Express and Jade to their respective latest version with the following command:

$ npm install serve-favicon morgan method-override express-session body-parser multer errorhandler express@latest jade@latest --save

Make the following changes to app.js:

1. The http module is longer required, so remove var http = require('http');

2. The built-in Express middleware express.favicon, express.logger, express.methodOverride, express.session, express.bodyParser and express.errorHandler are no longer available on the express object. You must install their alternatives manually and load them in the app.

3. You no longer need to load app.router. It is not a valid Express 4 app object, so remove app.use(app.router);

4. Make sure the middleware are loaded in the right order - load errorHandler after loading the app routes.

5. Start the app with app.listen() instead of http.createServer.

Version 4 app

package.json

Running the above npm command will update package.json as follows:

{
  "name": "application-name",
  "version": "0.0.1",
  "private": true,
  "scripts": {
    "start": "node app.js"
  },
  "dependencies": {
    "body-parser": "^1.5.2",
    "errorhandler": "^1.1.1",
    "express": "^4.8.0",
    "express-session": "^1.7.2",
    "jade": "^1.5.0",
    "method-override": "^2.1.2",
    "morgan": "^1.2.2",
    "multer": "^0.1.3",
    "serve-favicon": "^2.0.1"
  }
}

app.js

Then, remove invalid code, load the required middleware, and make other changes as necessary. Then app.js will look like this:

var express = require('express');
var routes = require('./routes');
var user = require('./routes/user');
var path = require('path');

var favicon = require('serve-favicon');
var logger = require('morgan');
var methodOverride = require('method-override');
var session = require('express-session');
var bodyParser = require('body-parser');
var multer = require('multer');
var errorHandler = require('errorhandler');

var app = express();

// all environments
app.set('port', process.env.PORT || 3000);
app.set('views', path.join(__dirname, 'views'));
app.set('view engine', 'jade');
app.use(favicon(__dirname + '/public/favicon.ico'));
app.use(logger('dev'));
app.use(methodOverride());
app.use(session({ resave: true,
                  saveUninitialized: true,
                  secret: 'uwotm8' }));
app.use(bodyParser.json());
app.use(bodyParser.urlencoded({ extended: true }));
app.use(multer());
app.use(express.static(path.join(__dirname, 'public')));

app.get('/', routes.index);
app.get('/users', user.list);

// error handling middleware should be loaded after the loading the routes
if ('development' == app.get('env')) {
  app.use(errorHandler());
}

app.listen(app.get('port'), function(){
  console.log('Express server listening on port ' + app.get('port'));
});

Run the app

With that, the migration process is complete, and the app is now an Express 4 app. To confirm, start the app with the following command:

$ node .

Load http://localhost:3000 and see the home page being rendered by Express 4.

Upgrading to the Express 4 app generator

The command-line tool to generate an Express app is still express, but to upgrade to the new version, you must uninstall the Express 3 app generator and then install the new express-generator.

Installing

If you already have the Express 3 app generator installed on your system, you must uninstall it as follows:

$ npm uninstall -g express

Depending on how your file and directory privileges are configured, you may need to run this command with sudo.

Now install the new generator:

$ npm install -g express-generator

Depending on how your file and directory privileges are configured, you may need to run this command with sudo.

Now the express command on your system is updated to the Express 4 generator.

Changes to the app generator

Command options and use largely remain the same, with the following exceptions:

• The --sessions option has been removed.
• The --jshtml option has been removed.
• The --hogan option has been added to support Hogan.js.

Example

Execute the following command to create an Express 4 app:

$ express app4

If you look at the contents of the app.js file in the app4 directory, you will notice that all the middleware (except express.static) required for the app are loaded as independent modules and the router middleware is no longer explicitly loaded in the app.

You will also notice that the app.js file is now a Node module, compared to the standalone app generated by the old generator.

After installing the dependencies, start the app using the following command:

$ npm start

If you peek at the npm start script in package.json file, you will notice that the actual command that starts the app is node ./bin/www, which used to be node app.js in Express 3.

Since the app.js file generated by the Express 4 generator is now a Node module, it can no longer be started independently as an app (unless you modify the code). It has to be to be loaded in a Node file and started via the Node file. The Node file is ./bin/www in this case.

Neither the bin directory nor the extensionless www file is mandatory for creating an Express app or starting the app. They are just suggestions by the generator, so feel free to modify them to suit your needs.

To get rid of the www directory and keep things the “Express 3 way”, delete the line that says module.exports = app; at the end of app.js, and paste the following code in its place.

app.set('port', process.env.PORT || 3000);

var server = app.listen(app.get('port'), function() {
  debug('Express server listening on port ' + server.address().port);
});

Make sure to load the debug module at the top of app.js with the following code.

var debug = require('debug')('app4');

Next, change "start": "node ./bin/www" in the package.json file to "start": "node app.js".

With that, you just moved the functionality of ./bin/www back to app.js. Not that it is recommended, but the exercise helps to understand how ./bin/www works and why app.js won’t start on its own anymore.