XAMPP + PHP to Node.js

Question

I'm planning on converting a small PHP codebase (less than 1000 lines) to Node.js. It's a web app that contains about 50k lines of JS, so I figured I'd move it to Node.js. (Plus, PHP sucks donkey balls.) There's a few static files (CSS, HTML, etc.) that I'll be serving with the node-static package. My issue is with my PHP files that are not static.

For example, I have a search page that runs on a GET variable. I tack on ?keyword=blah onto the end of the URL and the PHP script searches the DB and outputs HTML for the browser. How do I replicate this behavior in Node.js? (In other words, how can I create a server to listen at localhost/search.html and accept GET variables in the URL?)

I know I can change the way searches are done to accomplish this, but I'd really like to figure out how to replicate this behavior since I have several scripts that act the same way.

EDIT: As for the database, I'm actually using OrientDB. But I don't connect directly to it, I use a set of Java services that I post JSON requests to. So really, all I need to be able to do is post a JSON request (synchronously) and output HTML.

What kind of database are you using? Are you able to move to Mongo? — Raphael Caixeta
– Raphael Caixeta, Commented Mar 27, 2013 at 14:55
Take a look at Express, that's a pretty easy framework which can handle both static and dynamic requests. — robertklep
– robertklep, Commented Mar 27, 2013 at 14:58
Wow, I can't believe I searched for over an hour and Express didn't come up. Thank you, it's exactly what I need. Feel free to answer the question with that and I'll accept. — GJK
– GJK, Commented Mar 27, 2013 at 15:07

Raphael Caixeta · Accepted Answer · 2013-03-27 15:08:24Z

3

Here's how I do it:

Create a new ExpressJS app

"express myapp"

Install all the dependencies

"cd myapp && npm install".

In app.js, make sure you require the "url" package before "var app"

var url = require('url');

Add a new route to "app.js" so that it looks for any GET requests to "search.html"

app.get('/search.html', function(req, res) {

    // Process the request for the GET variables
    var url_parts = url.parse(req.url, true);
    var query = url_parts.query; // These are all your GET variables
    var search_keyword = query.keyword;

    if(search_keyword) {
        // The keyword indeed exists
        console.log(search_keyword);

    }
    res.end();
});

If you run the app and go to "search.html?keyword=haha", your console will output "haha". You can do anything after that with the keyword.

answered Mar 27, 2013 at 15:08

Raphael Caixeta

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1 Comment

GJK Over a year ago

If any of you people in the future are using Typescript, node.d.ts from MS describes the query member as a string when it's really an object. Just FYI.

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