Express 4 support

[dwwaddell]

Is there support for Express 4.x.x in Nodeclipse?

If you set "express" version to "latest" in your project package.json dependencies then NPM will install version 4.9.0 — at the time this was written.

I don't see in what Nodeclipse is concerned by any node module's version as this is mostly a coding issue to me: if your app need Express 4.x.x then install Express 4.x.x with NPM.

[dwwaddell]

I have Express 4.x.x installed but when you create a New Project with Nodeclipse, it creates an Express 3.2.6 project.

{
"name": "test2",
"version": "0.0.1",
"private": true,
"scripts": {
"start": "node app.js"
},
"dependencies": {
"express": "3.2.6",
"ejs": "*"
}
}

There are big differences between Express 3.x.x and 4.x.x that need to be changed in the JavaScript as can be seen when you use express-generator (4.x.x) to create a project (which won’t run under Nodeclipse).

Yes - Express 4 is not using connect middleware anymore: http://expressjs.com/migrating-4.html

When you create a new Express 4 project from express-generator it's not a Nodeclipse project - therefore it won't run as node application from Nodeclipse...

But it didn't run either from a terminal for me here...

$ sudo npm install -g express-generator
$ express myapp
$ cd myapp
$ npm install
$ node -v
$ v0.10.31
$ node app.js
$

Node exits without any output — am I missing something important in this process?

Running it as Node application from Nodeclipse node.js process is just terminated:

Which is not a surprise as it's not a Nodeclipse project (no project resources - etc): in my understanding an Express 4 project would need to be generated by Nodeclipse to be run from Nodeclipse — as a new project type.

[dwwaddell]

You have to start it with “npm start”.

[dwwaddell]

If you look at package.json, you will see how it starts now:

{
"name": "searchPiper",
"version": "0.0.1",
"private": true,
"script": {
"start": "node ./bin/www"
},

"dependencies": {
"body-parser": "~1.8.1",
"cookie-parser": "~1.3.3",
"debug": "~2.0.0",
"ejs": "~0.8.5",
"express": "~4.9.0",
"mongodb": "^1.4.10",
"mongoose": "^3.8.16",
"monk": "^0.9.0",
"morgan": "~1.3.0",
"passport": "^0.2.1",
"passport-twitter": "^1.0.2",
"serve-favicon": "~2.1.3"
}
}

$ npm start

Interesting: what about NPMEclipse then ;+)

node ./bin/www

works too:

{
"name": "myapp",
"version": "0.0.0",
"private": true,
"scripts": {
"start": "node ./bin/www"
},
"dependencies": {
"express": "~4.9.0",
"body-parser": "~1.8.1",
"cookie-parser": "~1.3.3",
"morgan": "~1.3.0",
"serve-favicon": "~2.1.3",
"debug": "~2.0.0",
"jade": "~1.6.0"
}
}

To summarize, we now have two different issues:
1 - a new project template for Express 4 (connect middleware is now splitted into several modules)
2 - a new "Run As" procedure that loads Express 4 application from ./bin/www

[dwwaddell]

Yes, and that is what you have to put in the Run Configuration to make it work in Eclipse.

[dwwaddell]

I think that will do it. You might want to add the ability to choose between a 3.x and 4.x in the creation process.

How do you set Run Configuration to make it run?

[dwwaddell]

Choose New Configuration, then click Search:

… and start typing “w” and it pops up the matching values:

… choose which folder in “In folders” by double-clicking on it. Or, you can just type in the path i.e. /searchPiper/bin/www

It doen't run for me:

When I click Run at bottom right of this latter panel nothing happens

[dwwaddell]

This doesn’t always work. I have had apps running for hours and then killed them and they won’t restart.

$ cat .project

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<projectDescription>
<name>myapp</name>
<comment></comment>
<projects>
</projects>
<buildSpec>
</buildSpec>
<natures>
</natures>
</projectDescription>

It's not a Nodeclipse project: <buildSpec> and <natures> elements are empty — so I don't see how it could run in Nodeclipse...