Question

I have just started studying node.js and express, the documentation of express on the home page is just too simple for me as a beginner.

for example,

app.configure('development', function(){
    app.use(express.static(__dirname + '/public'));
    ...
});

It may seems very obvious to you, but I just wonder what express.static mean? I can’t find an answer by searching Google.

This is just one example that I can’t understand the code.

So is there any better documentation of express for the absolute beginner?

Answer 1

I agree that the Express documentation reads a bit more like a book than an API doc. In the case of express.static, this is a re-expored middleware from Connect (connect.static), which Express is built on. From the middleware section of the docs:

Typically with connect middleware you would require(‘connect’) like so:

var connect = require('connect');
app.use(connect.logger());
app.use(connect.bodyParser());

This is somewhat annoying, so express re-exports these middleware properties, however they are identical:

app.use(express.logger());
app.use(express.bodyParser());

You can see what middleware Connect exposes on their web site. In particular, check out the documentation for the static middleware.