🚀 Create a Node.js API with Express

This template demonstrates how to:

• Start a demo Express server
• Handle GET and POST routes
• Receive HTML form and JSON data
• Protect endpoints with HTTP Basic Auth
• Send requests with httpCommand

---

🌐 Global helper

This httpCommand function is usable in your current note

async function httpCommand(method, url, data, headers) {
  try {
    let options = { method, headers };
    if (method.toLowerCase() === "post") {
      options.body = data;
    }
    const r = await fetch(url, options);
    console.log(await r.text());
  } catch (err) {
    console.log(err);
  }
}

---

📦 Install dependencies

npm install -S express@^4.19.2 express-basic-auth@^1.2.1 body-parser@^1.20.2

---

🖥️ Start the server

//exec: node

const express = require('express');
const bodyParser = require('body-parser');
const basicAuth = require('express-basic-auth');

const app = express();

// Simple GET route
app.get('/', (req, res) => {
  res.send('Hello World');
});

// POST route with HTML form data
app.post('/subscribe',
  express.urlencoded({ extended: true }),
  (req, res) => {
    print(`📧 Received email: ${req.body.email}`);
    res.sendStatus(200);
  }
);

// POST route with JSON data
app.post('/activate', bodyParser.json(), (req, res) => {
  printJSON(req.body);
  res.sendStatus(200);
});

// Protected GET route using HTTP Basic Auth
app.get('/auth',
  basicAuth({ users: { 'tony': 'supersecret' } }),
  (req, res) => {
    print(`🔐 Authenticated user: ${req.auth.user}`);
    res.send('Welcome, authenticated user!');
  }
);

// Start the server
app.listen(4000, () => {
  print('🚀 Server is running at http://localhost:4000');
});

---

🔍 Test the endpoints

1. GET request

httpCommand('GET', 'http://localhost:4000/')

---

2. POST form data (application/x-www-form-urlencoded)

const data = new URLSearchParams();
data.append('email', 'name@domain.com');

httpCommand('POST', 'http://localhost:4000/subscribe', data);

---

3. POST JSON data

const data = { name: "Anthony" };

httpCommand(
  'POST',
  'http://localhost:4000/activate',
  JSON.stringify(data),
  { 'Content-Type': 'application/json' }
);

---

4. Authenticated GET request (HTTP Basic Auth)

const username = "tony";
const password = "supersecret";
const auth = 'Basic ' + btoa(username + ":" + password);

httpCommand(
  'GET',
  'http://localhost:4000/auth',
  "",
  { 'Authorization': auth }
);

---

🧪 Tip: You can export the server code block as executable script file