Today I wanted to install NodeJS with Express on my Windows machine without having to compile anything on cygwin. Took me some time to find out how to do so easily. So here are those instructions for anyone else wanting to do so.

First, let’s create a dir to put everything in:

C:\Node

Install NodeJS

You can find pre-built and self-contained Windows binaries here: http://node-js.prcn.co.cc/. The latest stable is 0.4.11. Download that one and put everything in the Node folder. You should then have something like this:

C:\Node\bin
C:\Node\lib
...

Install Express

Next up you install Express. That requires Mime and Connect modules. You can find all on GitHub:

• https://github.com/bentomas/node-mime.
• https://github.com/senchalabs/connect. I downloaded version 1.7.0.
• https://github.com/visionmedia/express. I downloaded version 2.4.3.

C:\Node\lib\node_modules\connect\...
C:\Node\lib\node_modules\express\...
C:\Node\lib\node_modules\mime\...

Test and Run

Create this file C:\Node\test.js and put this in:

var express = require('express');
var app = express.createServer();
app.get('/', function(req, res){
    res.send('Hello World');
});
app.listen(80);

To run, open a command prompt, step into the Node folder and type:

bin\node.exe test.js

At this point, you may have this error:

Cannot find module 'qs'

If so, do a search and replace for ‘qs’ by ‘querystring’. That module was renamed in NodeJS, but Connect and Express may not have made the change yet. I had to change these 3 files:

• C:\Node\lib\node_modules\connect\lib\middleware\bodyParser.js
• C:\Node\lib\node_modules\connect\lib\middleware\query.js
• C:\Node\lib\node_modules\express\lib\http.js

After the search and replace, run again and the server should run without any errors. Now in a Browser type http://localhost and you should see Hello World.

That’s it! Now you can start developing a NodeJS web app directly from your Windows machine. How great is that!

Tags: Javascript, NodeJS

This entry was posted on Sunday, September 4th, 2011 at 8:53 am and is filed under Coding, Development. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can trackback from your own site.