In this blog we will learn how we can create a server and listen for requests. Node js and NPM should be installed in your system. If you haven’t installed then you can check my previous blog on node js over here : NodeJs for beginners: 02 – How to install node js ? 

Open VS code or any code editor of your choice and open a terminal and type following command: npm init -y. This command will create a new file in your directory named as package.json. This file is used to manage node packages. You’ll know more about this file as soon as you compelete this node series. Now make a new file and name it as index.js or whaterver name you want to give to this file.

Now open package.json  file and change following:

Image 1. package.json file

Make sure to chagne index.js to your file name. This command will basically start our server. But wait we haven’t created one. So, let’s go and make our server.

Open file index.js or whaterver file you have created. Inside that file type following codes:

Image 2. creating server in index.js file

So basically we have imported http package which is a default package that comes with node js at the time of installation. http package will help us to create a server. http.createServer() is a function to create server and  in line no. 8 our created server is litening to port 8000. It means that our server will send responses to all the request that are coming to port 8000. We have given a callback function to listen() function. We’ll know about them in later but for now only undrestand that it will execute only after previous task is completed. In our case until server starts listening to port 8000, callback function wont excecute.

Now open terminal and run npm start command. You will see server is running at port 8000 in the terminal if you are following properly. It means our server is running properly. But our server is not listening to any requests. So let’s make our server to listen to some requrests and send responses to those request. Write down following codes in index.js file:

Image 3. Listen to requests

As you can see at line 7 our server is listening to path / and a call back funtion is assigned to it. Callback function will execute as soon as any request comes at / path. The callback function is having two parameters req and res which is short form of request and response. These two are provided by node js itself. req is an object which will contain details to upcoming request. res is use for sending responses to upcoming request. Now if you will open you browser and if you go to link http://localhost:8000/, you will get a following response:

Image 4. Response to our request

What happend is basically, as soon as you open your browser and searched http://localhost:8000/, your browser sent a req to / of localhost:8000. Here localhost means you pc and 8000 is port number. As our server is running at port 8000 and litening to / path, we got response in the browser. This is how nodejs handles each request. This is it for this blog. Check out my next blog :