Express Basics

node:http works, but you write a lot of plumbing: parsing URLs and bodies, routing, headers. Express is the most widely used minimal Node web framework; it adds: • routing (app.get("/items/:id", …)), • middleware (logging, auth, body parsing), • helpers (res.json, res.status, res.redirect), • static file serving.

Alternatives include Fastify, Koa, Hono and NestJS — concepts transfer.