If I were to alter the content of my book Node.js Recipes I would add more great examples of web frameworks. I’ve recently targeted several which I would love to use in upcoming projects. The first one I want to talk about is Hapi.

Hapi is a Node.js web framework that was developed by WalmartLabs/Spumko.

First you need to create a package.json file - npm init can help with this if you do not wish to configure your own.

$> npm init

you will then be walked through the process to generate your package.json file.

 {
   "name": "myHapiApp",
   "version": "0.0.0",
   "description": "Hapi",
   "main": "index.js",
   "scripts": {
         "test": ""
   },
   "author": "Cory Gackenheimer <c@cgack.com>",
   "license": "MIT"
 }

Is this ok? (yes)

next you’ll need it get Hapi this is done with the command:

npm install hapi --save

Now you have hapi in your node_modules directory. You now need to create your server.

var Hapi = require('hapi');

var server = Hapi.createServer('localhost', 8080);

server.start();

If you are to start this server node . or node index.js and navigate to http://localhost:8080 at this point you would get {"statusCode":404,"error":"Not Found"} because you have not set up any routing in your server. To add routes you need to use the server.route method. Here I’ll add a route we could use to simulate an API GET request, and the we’ll also see serving files from a static directory.

var Hapi = require('hapi');

var server = Hapi.createServer('localhost', 8080);

server.route({
  method: 'GET',
  path: '/api/{path*}',
  handler: function(request, reply) {
      reply('API request ' + request.url.path);
  }
 }); 

 server.route({
      method: 'GET',
      path: '/{path*}',
      handler: {
          directory: {
              path: './static',
              index: true
          }
      }
 });

 server.start();

Now if you navigate to http://localhost:8080/api/foo you will get a response with that path. If you instead try to hit a static page, i.e. http://localhsot:8080/ -> ./static/index.html you have set up in your local ./static directory you will get that file returned to your web browser .

That is the quick getting started for Hapi if you want to use it to build a web server. I have enjoyed using it and the freedom it allows me to build my applications. I look forward to utilizing it more in future projects.