Routing Without a Framework
📌 Covered in this chapter:
URL Pathname Matching · Method Checking · Query Parameters · 404 Handling
Build simple GET/POST route handling using only Node's built-in http module, before moving on to Express.js.
1Routing Without a Framework — What You'll Learn
Build simple GET/POST route handling using only Node's built-in http module, before moving on to Express.js.
Here's everything this chapter covers, in the order you'll learn it:
- Reading the URL pathname
- Checking the HTTP method
- Handling a GET route
- Handling a POST route
- Returning a 404 for unmatched routes
- Route parameters (manual parsing)
- Query parameters (manual parsing)
- Parsing the request body manually
- Building a small response helper function
- Sending proper error responses
- Basic API versioning
2Working Example
💻 Example: Routing Without a Framework
JavaScript
▶ Run in Compiler
import { createServer } from "node:http";
const server = createServer((request, response) => {
if (request.method === "GET" && request.url === "/api/courses") {
response.writeHead(200, { "Content-Type": "application/json" });
response.end(JSON.stringify([{ id: 1, name: "Node.js" }]));
return;
}
response.writeHead(404, { "Content-Type": "application/json" });
response.end(JSON.stringify({ message: "Route not found" }));
});
server.listen(3000);3Best Practices & Common Pitfalls
💡 Key things to remember:
- Manually routing like this quickly becomes unwieldy — this is exactly the pain point that frameworks like Express.js (Phase 7) solve.
- Always have a fallback 404 handler at the end so unmatched routes get a proper response instead of hanging.
❓ Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
Q What's the most important thing to understand about routing without a framework?
Focus on: URL Pathname Matching · Method Checking · Query Parameters · 404 Handling. These are the core building blocks this chapter's examples are built around, and they show up repeatedly in later chapters of this course.
Q Do I need external npm packages for routing without a framework?
Only where explicitly shown in the code examples above (like Express, Zod, or Socket.IO) — otherwise, this chapter relies entirely on Node.js's own built-in capabilities.