mdn/express-locallibrary-tutorial

Local Library website written in NodeJS/Express; example for the MDN server-side development NodeJS module: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Learn/Server-side/Express_Nodejs.

JavaScript

1,276

412 commits

updated Oct 3, 2026

See the code

README

express-locallibrary-tutorial

Tutorial "Local Library" website written in in Node/Express.


This web application creates an online catalog for a small local library, where users can browse available books and manage their accounts.

A UML diagram showing the relation of database entities in this example repository

For more information see the associated MDN tutorial home page.

Note The auth branch in this repository implements an unsupported and undocumented version of the library with User Authentication and Authorization. This may be a useful starting point for some users.

Quick Start

To get this project up and running locally on your computer:

  1. Set up a Node.js development environment.

  2. Once you have node setup install the project in the root of your clone of this repo:

    npm install
    
  3. Run the tutorial server, using the appropriate command line shell for your environment:

    # Linux terminal
    DEBUG=express-locallibrary-tutorial:* npm run devstart
    
    # Windows Powershell
    $ENV:DEBUG = "express-locallibrary-tutorial:*"; npm start
    
  4. Open a browser to http://localhost:3000/ to open the library site.

[!NOTE] The library uses a default MongoDB database hosted on MongoDB Atlas. You should use a different database for your own code experiments.

Contributing

The project is the result of carefully running through all the steps in the tutorial on MDN. Any changes to either MDN or this project must be synchronized. Generally it is better to implement changes here before submitting them to MDN.

Before submitting a PR, make sure that the tests pass:

npm test
demo
example
express
nodejs
webapp

mdn/express-locallibrary-tutorial

Local Library website written in NodeJS/Express; example for the MDN server-side development NodeJS module: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Learn/Server-side/Express_Nodejs.

JavaScript

1,276

412 commits

updated Oct 3, 2026

See the code

README

express-locallibrary-tutorial

Tutorial "Local Library" website written in in Node/Express.


This web application creates an online catalog for a small local library, where users can browse available books and manage their accounts.

A UML diagram showing the relation of database entities in this example repository

For more information see the associated MDN tutorial home page.

Note The auth branch in this repository implements an unsupported and undocumented version of the library with User Authentication and Authorization. This may be a useful starting point for some users.

Quick Start

To get this project up and running locally on your computer:

  1. Set up a Node.js development environment.

  2. Once you have node setup install the project in the root of your clone of this repo:

    npm install
    
  3. Run the tutorial server, using the appropriate command line shell for your environment:

    # Linux terminal
    DEBUG=express-locallibrary-tutorial:* npm run devstart
    
    # Windows Powershell
    $ENV:DEBUG = "express-locallibrary-tutorial:*"; npm start
    
  4. Open a browser to http://localhost:3000/ to open the library site.

[!NOTE] The library uses a default MongoDB database hosted on MongoDB Atlas. You should use a different database for your own code experiments.

Contributing

The project is the result of carefully running through all the steps in the tutorial on MDN. Any changes to either MDN or this project must be synchronized. Generally it is better to implement changes here before submitting them to MDN.

Before submitting a PR, make sure that the tests pass:

npm test
demo
example
express
nodejs
webapp

Project health

Overall

7.0/10

Maintained

3/10

Code review

10/10
OpenSSF Scorecard

Significant stargazers

Y.D.X.

105 followers · starred Dec 2021

André Jaenisch

141 followers · starred Jul 2021

Iurii Kucherov

34 followers · starred Jan 2018

Xiaoyang Cai

0 followers · starred Mar 2022