All request are routed and executed using controllers. When you create a new controller you specify the HTTP method that this controller will handle and the path-pattern. The most simple route would be an HTTP GET method responding to the / (root) path.
Controllers are written in JavaScript with the JavaScript SDK plus some additions specific of web development.
The most simple controller would be a controller with this code:
response.send('Hello world')
You edit the code right in your browser. There is no need to use any other development tool. You will see two URLs below the code editor similar to this: http://web-v1- dev-your-project.backbeamapps.com/. By default Backbeam creates a few subdomains for your project (this is explained in the next section). You can access that URL right now. While you are developing the URLs are password-protected. You can see the credentials you need to use in the "Web development" section. This way your web is only visible to the world when it is ready.
When you create a controller you can define a constant path (such as /users/top-users-in-my-webapp) or a pattern. Patterns contain path segments beginning with : and followed by a name. You will be able to access the value of that path segment using that name in your controller. For example if you define a URL pattern like this:
/items/:item
If someone requests the path /items/some-item then you can access the parameter called 'item' in your code as follows:
// request.params.item = 'some-item' in the example (/items/some-item)
response.send('Requesting item: '+request.params.item)