Setting response headers in Node.js - Mini Project: Build & Apply

Setting Response Headers in Node.js

📖 Scenario: You are building a simple web server using Node.js. You want to send back a response with custom headers to tell the browser how to handle the content.

🎯 Goal: Create a Node.js server that responds to requests with a custom Content-Type header and a X-Custom-Header header.

📋 What You'll Learn

Create a basic HTTP server using Node.js http module

Set the Content-Type header to text/plain

Set a custom header called X-Custom-Header with the value MyHeaderValue

Send a simple text response body

💡 Why This Matters

🌍 Real World

Web servers often need to send headers to control how browsers handle content, such as content type, caching, or security policies.

💼 Career

Understanding how to set response headers is essential for backend developers working with Node.js to build APIs and web servers.

1

Create a basic HTTP server

Write code to import the http module and create a server variable called server using http.createServer().

Node.js

# Your code here to import http and create server

Need a hint?

Use require('http') to import the module and http.createServer() to create the server.

2

Add a request listener function

Add a request listener function to server that takes req and res as parameters.

Node.js

const http = require('http');
const server = http.createServer((req, res) => {
  // Your code here
});

Need a hint?

Pass a function with req and res parameters to http.createServer().

3

Set response headers

Inside the request listener, use res.setHeader() to set the Content-Type header to text/plain and the X-Custom-Header to MyHeaderValue.

Node.js

const http = require('http');
const server = http.createServer((req, res) => {
  // Set Content-Type header
  // Set X-Custom-Header
});

Need a hint?

Use res.setHeader(name, value) to add headers before sending the response.

4

Send the response and listen on port 3000

Inside the request listener, use res.end() to send the text Hello, world!. Then call server.listen(3000) to start the server on port 3000.

Node.js

const http = require('http');
const server = http.createServer((req, res) => {
  res.setHeader('Content-Type', 'text/plain');
  res.setHeader('X-Custom-Header', 'MyHeaderValue');
  // Send response text
});

// Start server on port 3000

Need a hint?

Use res.end() to finish the response and server.listen(3000) to start listening.