HELP.md

Help and documentation

This file is a doc for folks trying to figure out how to do things in the project. Please feel free to add to it!

What's an HTTP Request?

An HTTP request is a string that's sent from a client to a server. Simplified, an HTTP request looks like this:

GET github.com

When you type "github.com" into your browser and press enter, your browser is actually sending a string that looks like GET github.com to github's servers. Then Github sends back an HTML file back.

What's a "route"?

In this project, when we say "writing a route" we mean creating a function that listens for a particular http request and then sends back some information.

For example, lets say we have a route that looks like this:

GET localhost:8080/fizz

We might write a javascript function like this:

function fizz(request, response) {
  response.send("buzz");
}

And then later we might connect that function to the route like this:

router.get("/fizz", fizz);