# Routes Folder

Routes define the pathways within your application.
Fastify's structure supports the modular monolith approach, where your
application is organized into distinct, self-contained modules.
This facilitates easier scaling and future transition to a microservice architecture.
Each module can evolve independently, and in the future, you might want to deploy
some of these modules separately.

In this folder you should define all the routes that define the endpoints
of your web application.
Each service is a [Fastify
plugin](https://fastify.dev/docs/latest/Reference/Plugins/), it is
encapsulated (it can have its own independent plugins) and it is
typically stored in a file; be careful to group your routes logically,
e.g. all `/users` routes in a `users.js` file. We have added
a `root.js` file for you with a '/' root added.

If a single file become too large, create a folder and add a `index.js` file there:
this file must be a Fastify plugin, and it will be loaded automatically
by the application. You can now add as many files as you want inside that folder.
In this way you can create complex routes within a single monolith,
and eventually extract them.

If you need to share functionality between routes, place that
functionality into the `plugins` folder, and share it via
[decorators](https://fastify.dev/docs/latest/Reference/Decorators/).

If you're a bit confused about using `async/await` to write routes, you would
better take a look at [Promise resolution](https://fastify.dev/docs/latest/Reference/Routes/#promise-resolution) for more details.
