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Express is a minimal and flexible node.js web application framework, providing a robust set of features for building single and multi-page, and hybrid web applications.
SpecsUpdate
Pros
Pro Can make use of a great number of plugins
Express takes advantage of Node's NPM to distribute and install countless plugins made by third parties which solve almost anything a developer would want to do with Express.
Pro Easy to learn for people who have a little experience in backend dev
The fact that it's a JavaScript framework means that it's easy to learn for people who have even a minimal background in backend dev but they have experience in developing for the frontend, since JavaScript is a language most frontend developers are very familiar with.
Pro Massive ecosystem of Middleware
If you have not already checked out the Express.js ecosystem of middleware, you should.
Pro Great routing API
Express' extremely powerful routing API allows developers to do tasks ranging from building a REST API to building the routes for a simple web app and then take it to the next level by using route parameters and query strings.
Pro Good documentation
Express.js is really well documented. Everything is covered and they are very helpful for beginners and advanced developers alike.
Pro Setting up is very easy
Setting up a new Express project is very easy. It consists of installing a handful of libraries through NPM run a single npm install and everything is ready to go.
Pro Great for beginner Node.js programmers
With a little learning curve, it is a good choice for new NodeJS developers to get started quickly. Express boasts great, thorough documentation.
Pro Great supportive community
Express has a big community with a lot of guides and tutorials written about it by developers that have been using it for quite some time.
Pro Express.js is in the Node.js Foundation Incubator Program
Node.js Foundation
Announcement here
The Node.js Foundation is a Collaborative Project at The Linux Foundation. Linux Foundation Collaborative Projects are independently funded software projects that harness the power of collaborative development to fuel innovation across industries and ecosystems.
Pro Support for a lot of plugins
Express takes advantage of Node's NPM to distribute and install countless plugins made by third parties which solve almost anything a developer would want to do with Express.
Pro Relatively mature
Being a somewhat old Node.js web app framework and being one of the most widely used frameworks, Express.js has matured quite a lot during all that time. It's more stable than its competitors and a huge community backing it.
Pro Good Oauth/Facebook integration with connect module
You can easily add oAuth integration/social logins to your next web app without much hassle, using this authentication middleware for connect.
Pro Massive ecosystem of middleware
If you have not already checked out the Express.js ecosystem of middleware, you should.
Cons
Con you need to learn new trending things every day
ES6 ? maybe ES7?did you hear flow? Reason? Elm? TypeScript?
mongoose? sequelize? maybe typeORM? a Hot new ORM comes : Knex . only few month later :RxDb
chai? okey i'm go with mocha. but Jest is hot right now
good luck re-learning every day
Con No single recommended way of doing something
Express considers itself to be a "minimalistic unopinionated framework", it basically lets the developer determine how their project will be organized. On one hand, this gives anyone terrific power and flexibility to use any library they want for a certain task and to organize their project structure however they want. But on the other hand, there's no single recommended way of organizing things, which can be a trap for beginners and experienced developers alike and result in unmaintainable projects.
Con Not great for data science
If you wanted to connect to Python Data Science files, there isn't really a good way to connect JS and Python, whereas, with a python framework like Flask or Django, you can easily just connect the files since everything is in Python.
Con NPM hurts more than it helps
Because anyone and their brother, sister, best friend, oldest friend, mother, father, and dog have an idea they would like to publish as a Node.JS plugin to the world -- and they want to use all of their best friends plugins you have a dependency chain with more links than there are stars in the sky each time you choose to add a simple NPM module/plugin. Be wary, my friends.
Con Working with relational databases can be a hassle
Not only express, but every Node framework has this problem. While there exist plugins and libraries that allow developers to use relational databases in their web applications, they are not very good and usually it's a hassle and more trouble than it's worth to use a relational database with Node and express.
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