Installing

Before you begin, make sure you have Node.js 0.10 or higher installed. Then, create a directory for your application and navigate into it.

mkdir myapp
cd myapp

Use the npm init command to create a package.json file for your application. For more information on how package.json works, see Specifics of npm’s package.json handling.

npm init

This command prompts you for a number of things, such as the name and version of your application. For now, you can simply hit RETURN to accept the defaults for most of them, with the following exception:

entry point: (index.js)

Enter app.js, or whatever you want the name of the main file to be. If you want it to be index.js, hit RETURN to accept the suggested default file name.

Now, install Express in the myapp directory and save it in the dependencies list. For example:

npm install express

To install Express temporarily and not add it to the dependencies list:

npm install express --no-save