These are the projects for the JavaScript Level 2 module in Learn JS the Hard Way.
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# 06: A First Web Application
In this exercise you'll create a "classic" web application. What this means is:
1. Browsers make requests for a URL, like `/posts/01-my-first-post/`.
2. Your application receives the request, and generates the HTML.
3. Your application then returns that HTML to the browser which displays it.
This is a deceptively simple process that will combine what you've learned so far with the [Express.js](https://expressjs.com/) project version 4.x. Express.js is a minimalist web application server with good documentation that should be easy for you to use. It's the one I use throughout the course.
## Your Application Features
Your application should do the following things:
1. Handle requests for blog posts and dynamically load the .md file to return HTML.
2. Use a template system that's separate from the blog contents.
3. Load configuration data from a file in `secrets/config.json`.
4. The configuration file should let you change important things about the blog like it's title, author, etc. and it will render the entire design with the new settings.
## Learning Objectives
Your actual objective is to learn how to learn an API someone else created. It's very common to find a project you want to use and have to spend time learning how it works. This requires a combination of going through the documentation, creating a test project, and figuring out how everything fits together.
For Express.js you should start with the [getting started](https://expressjs.com/en/starter/installing.html) to get an overview of how to use Express. Next you should browse [guide of topics](https://expressjs.com/en/guide/routing.html) which is weirdly organized via the dropdown menu. Your final study for Express.js is to browse the [Advanced Topics](https://expressjs.com/en/advanced/developing-template-engines.html). After that you should work on the project for this exercise while keeping the [API](https://expressjs.com/en/4x/api.html) open.