🧩 Week 10 – Node.js + Express.js Basics

🎯 Goal: Learn the fundamentals of Node.js and Express to build backend APIs and servers.

📚 Daily Breakdown

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✅ Day 1 – Introduction to Node.js

🧠 Topics:

• What is Node.js? How it works (Event Loop)
• Installing Node.js and npm
• Creating a simple "Hello World" server
• Core modules: fs, http, path

🛠 Activities:

• Install Node.js & verify with node -v
• Create a simple HTTP server on localhost
• Log requests and send custom responses

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✅ Day 2 – Node Modules & File System

🧠 Topics:

• Using built-in modules: fs, os, path
• Creating and reading files
• Writing and appending to files
• Synchronous vs Asynchronous operations

🛠 Activities:

• Create a script to log server stats
• Build a note-taking file writer (like a diary)
• Read user data from JSON file

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✅ Day 3 – Introduction to Express.js

🧠 Topics:

• What is Express? Why use it?
• Installing Express via npm
• Express routing: GET, POST
• Setting up a basic REST API

🛠 Activities:

• Initialize npm (npm init -y)
• Build a server with Express
• Create sample routes: /, /about, /contact

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✅ Day 4 – Middleware & Static Files

🧠 Topics:

• What is middleware? How it works in Express
• Creating custom middleware
• Serving static HTML/CSS/JS from “public” folder
• Using built-in express.static()

🛠 Activities:

• Build a logging middleware (logs each request)
• Serve a static portfolio website from Express
• Use express.json() and express.urlencoded() middleware

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✅ Day 5 – REST API Basics

🧠 Topics:

• RESTful principles: GET, POST, PUT, DELETE
• Using Postman for API testing
• CRUD API with in-memory data
• Response codes: 200, 201, 400, 404

🛠 Activities:

• Create an in-memory product API
• Test endpoints via Postman
• Return appropriate JSON responses

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✅ Day 6 – CRUD Project: Mini Contact Manager

🧠 Tasks:

• Setup Express server
• Create routes to:

• Get all contacts
• Add new contact
• Update contact
• Delete contact
• Use array to store contacts temporarily

🛠 Bonus:

• Add simple frontend using fetch()

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✅ Day 7 – Quiz + Practice & Wrap-Up

🧠 Tasks:

• Review all concepts (Node + Express + REST)
• Build mini REST API from scratch (To-do or Notes)
• Quiz: 15 MCQs (Node.js, Express basics, HTTP)
• Code Challenge: Debug broken API routes

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Ready to move forward with 🧩 Week 11 – MongoDB + Mongoose integration?