# Custom Express Server example ## How to use Download the example: ```bash curl https://codeload.github.com/zeit/next.js/tar.gz/master | tar -xz --strip=2 next.js-master/examples/custom-server-express cd custom-server-express ``` or clone the repo: ```bash git clone https://github.com/zeit/next.js.git --depth=1 cd next.js/examples/custom-server-express ``` Install the dependencies: ```bash npm install ``` Run the dev server: ```bash npm start ``` ## The idea behind the example Most of the times the default Next server will be enough but sometimes you want to run your own server to customize routes or other kind of the app behavior. Next provides a [Custom server and routing](https://github.com/zeit/next.js#custom-server-and-routing) so you can customize as much as you want. Because the Next.js server is just a node.js module you can combine it with any other part of the node.js ecosystem. in this case we are using express to build a custom router on top of Next. The example shows a server that serves the component living in `pages/a.js` when the route `/b` is requested and `pages/b.js` when the route `/a` is accessed. This is obviously a non-standard routing strategy. You can see how this custom routing is being made inside `server.js`.