Log in here

Welcome to my article on how to create a basic login page in Node.js! As a developer, I have found that creating a login page is a fundamental requirement for many web applications. In this tutorial, I will guide you through the process of building a simple login page using Node.js, Express, and MongoDB. So, let’s get started!

Setting up the Environment

Before we dive into coding, let’s make sure we have everything set up. First, make sure you have Node.js and npm (Node Package Manager) installed on your machine. You can download them from the official Node.js website. Once you have them installed, open your terminal or command prompt and run the following command to check their versions:

node -v
npm -v

If you see the versions displayed, you are all set to move forward. Great!

Creating the Project Structure

Now, let’s create a new directory for our project and navigate into it. Open your terminal or command prompt, and run the following commands:

mkdir basic-login-page
cd basic-login-page

Next, let’s initialize our project. Run the following command to create a package.json file:

npm init -y

This will create a package.json file with default settings. Now, let’s install the necessary dependencies. Run the following command:

npm install express ejs mongoose

This will install Express, a popular web framework for Node.js, EJS, a simple template engine, and Mongoose, a MongoDB object modeling tool. These dependencies will be essential for our login page project.

Creating the Login Page

With our project structure and dependencies in place, it’s time to create our login page. First, let’s create a new file called app.js in the root of our project directory. This file will serve as the entry point for our application.

Open app.js in your favorite code editor and add the following code:

const express = require('express');
const app = express();

app.listen(3000, () => {
console.log('Server is running on port 3000');
});

In the code above, we first import the Express package and create a new instance of it. We then set the view engine to EJS, which allows us to render dynamic templates. Our app.js file contains a single route handler for the home page (‘/’), which will render the ‘login’ template.

Now, let’s create the ‘login.ejs’ file. In the root of your project directory, create a new directory called ‘views’. Inside the ‘views’ directory, create a new file called ‘login.ejs’.

Open ‘login.ejs’ and add the following code:







In the code block above, we have a basic HTML structure with a form for the login page. The form has two input fields for email and password, and a submit button. The form action is set to ‘/login’, which we will handle later.

Handling the Login Request

Now that we have our login page ready, let’s handle the login request. In your app.js file, add the following code after the ‘app.get’ route handler:

app.post('/login', (req, res) => {
const { email, password } = req.body;
// Your login logic goes here
});

In the code above, we define a new route handler for the login form submission. We extract the email and password from the request body using req.body. This is where you would typically implement your own authentication logic, such as checking if the email and password match a user in your database.

Conclusion

Congratulations! You have now successfully created a basic login page in Node.js using Express and MongoDB. We covered setting up the environment, creating the project structure, building the login page, and handling the login request. This is just the beginning, and there’s a lot more you can do to enhance the functionality and security of your login page. Happy coding!