Express Web Server

A small Express 5 blog app — JSON API (/api/posts, /api/posts/:slug, /api/runtime), server-rendered article pages, and a static HTML/CSS/JS frontend — running on GJS through @gjsify/http. Express imports unmodified from npm; gjsify’s Node compat layer serves every http.Server / IncomingMessage / ServerResponse API call Express reaches for.

What it exercises

Pillar	What Express needs
@gjsify/http	http.createServer(), Server.listen(), full IncomingMessage (close-only-via-destroy per Node semantics) + ServerResponse API
@gjsify/stream	req.pipe(res), body parsing
@gjsify/events	EventEmitter with enumerable prototype methods (Express 5 requires this for some middleware)
@gjsify/url	URL parsing in Express’s route matcher
libsoup-3.0	The TCP listener + HTTP/1.1 parser under @gjsify/http

Run it on GJS

gjsify showcase express-webserver

Starts a Gtk.Application-less GLib mainloop with Express bound to http://127.0.0.1:3000. Open the page or hit the API with curl:

curl http://127.0.0.1:3000/api/posts
# → {"count":…,"posts":[…]}

curl http://127.0.0.1:3000/api/runtime
# → {"runtime":"GJS","platform":"linux","version":"…","time":"…"}

The same Express app would behave identically under Node — there’s no GJS-specific branch in src/index.ts. That’s the load-bearing claim.

Run it under Node (for comparison)

cd showcases/node/express-webserver
gjsify run build
gjsify run start:node

The package ships both start (GJS) and start:node scripts; same src/index.ts, two bundles (dist/index.gjs.js, dist/index.node.mjs).

Source

showcases/node/express-webserver/

• src/index.ts — the whole Express app: middleware, JSON API, server-rendered HTML pages, app.listen() (npm express import, no @gjsify/* in the request path)
• src/data/posts.ts — in-memory blog post fixtures consumed by the API + HTML routes
• src/public/ — static frontend (index.html, style.css, app.js) served via express.static()

Why Express specifically

Express is the most-deployed Node web framework on the planet. If gjsify’s http package can carry Express 5 unmodified — including middleware composition, error handling, route matching — then arbitrary npm web apps targeting Node tend to “just work” on GJS too. This showcase is the canary.

Integration coverage for the broader npm web ecosystem (Socket.IO, axios, WebTorrent, …) lives under tests/integration/ — they all dovetail with the same @gjsify/http + @gjsify/stream surface.

Related

• refs/socket.io/ — Socket.IO uses http.Server directly; the integration suite under tests/integration/socket.io/ is the multi-client validation
• refs/undici/ — Node’s fetch / HTTP client reference, separate from @gjsify/http but the same socket plumbing
• @gjsify/http — the package itself