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JavaScript

Posted by Jason Pallone
Jason Pallone
11,340 Points

Using HTML and express?

So with express we can use PUG, but could I do my HTML and CSS on the frontend with javascript, and use express for the backend? Or do I need to use PUG in order to use express? Which is more commom/better if this is possible?

Thanks in advance!

1 Answer

Aayush Mitra
Aayush Mitra
24,904 Points

Hello! You can use normal HTML with express by serving in as a static file. But this is not as common to do because when you serve HTML files in express, you cannot give dynamic data to them. Whereas in PUG you can give dynamic data to the page because it is a templating engine. One way to actually give dynamic data by just using HTML is making an express api that serves JSON. Then in the front end JavaScript you can use the fetch api to make requests to that api and you can insert that data into the HTML so that it is dynamic. But that method is quite time consuming and it is really unnecessary. The only time you probably would want to use that method is with a JavaScript framework. I would suggest that you stick with PUG. If you have already written HTML code and wish to convert it to PUG, there is an online converter where you just paste in the HTML code and it converts it into PUG code.

I hope this makes sense!

Thanks :)

Jason Pallone
Jason Pallone
11,340 Points

Ok thanks that does make sense!