Node.js in Action, Second Edition

**Summary** __Node.js in Action, Second Edition__ is a thoroughly revised book based on the best-selling first edition. It starts at square one and guides you through all the features, techniques, and concepts you'll need to build production-quality Node applications. Purchase of the print book includes a free eBook in PDF, Kindle, and ePub formats from Manning Publications. **About the Technology** You already know JavaScript. The trick to mastering Node.js is learning how to build applications that fully exploit its powerful asynchronous event handling and non-blocking I/O features. The Node server radically simplifies event-driven real-time apps like chat, games, and live data analytics, and with its incredibly rich ecosystem of modules, tools, and libraries, it's hard to beat! **About the Book** Based on the bestselling first edition, __Node.js in Action, Second Edition__ is a completely new book. Packed with practical examples, it teaches you how to create high-performance web servers using JavaScript and Node. You'll master key design concepts such as asynchronous programming, state management, and event-driven programming. And you'll learn to put together MVC servers using Express and Connect, design web APIs, and set up the perfect production environment to build, lint, and test. **What's Inside** * Mastering non-blocking I/O * The Node event loop * Testing and deploying * Web application templating **About the Reader** Written for web developers with intermediate JavaScript skills. **About the Authors** The Second Edition author team includes Node masters **Alex Young**, **Bradley Meck**, **Mike Cantelon**, and **Tim Oxley**, along with original authors **Marc Harter**, **T.J. Holowaychuk**, and **Nathan Rajlich**. **Table of contents** ## PART 1 - WELCOME TO NODE 2. Welcome to Node.js 3. Node programming fundamentals 4. What is a Node web application? ## PART 2 - WEB DEVELOPMENT WITH NODE 6. Front-end build systems 7. Server-side frameworks 8. Connect and Express in depth 9. Web application templating 10. Storing application data 11. Testing Node applications 12. Deploying Node applications and maintaining uptime ## PART 3 - BEYOND WEB DEVELOPMENT 14. Writing command-line applications 15. Conquering the desktop with Electron Node.js in Action, Second Edition Praise for the First Edition brief contents contents preface acknowledgments about this book Roadmap Code conventions and downloads Book Forum about the author about the cover illustration Part 1 Welcome to Node 1 Welcome to Node.js 1.1 A typical Node web application 1.1.1 Nonblocking I/O 1.1.2 The event loop 1.2 ES2015, Node, and V8 1.2.1 Node and V8 1.2.2 Working with feature groups 1.2.3 Understanding Node’s release schedule 1.3 Installing Node 1.4 Node’s built-in tools 1.4.1 npm 1.4.2 The core modules 1.4.3 The debugger 1.5 The three main types of Node program 1.5.1 Web applications 1.5.2 Command-line tools and daemons 1.5.3 Desktop applications 1.5.4 Applications suited to Node 1.6 Summary 2 Node programming fundamentals 2.1 Organizing and reusing Node functionality 2.2 Starting a new Node project 2.2.1 Creating modules 2.3 Fine-tuning module creation by using module.exports 2.4 Reusing modules by using the node_modules folder 2.5 Exploring caveats 2.6 Using asynchronous programming techniques 2.7 Handling one-off events with callbacks 2.8 Handling repeating events with event emitters 2.8.1 An example event emitter 2.8.2 Responding to an event that should occur only once 2.8.3 Creating event emitters: a publish/subscribe example 2.8.4 Extending the event emitter: a file watcher example 2.9 Challenges with asynchronous development 2.10 Sequencing asynchronous logic 2.11 When to use serial flow control 2.12 Implementing serial flow control 2.13 Implementing parallel flow control 2.14 Using community tools 2.15 Summary 3 What is a Node web application? 3.1 Understanding a Node web application’s structure 3.1.1 Starting a new web app 3.1.2 Comparing other platforms 3.1.3 What’s next? 3.2 Building a RESTful web service 3.3 Adding a database 3.3.1 Making your own model API 3.3.2 Making articles readable and saving them for later 3.4 Adding a user interface 3.4.1 Supporting multiple formats 3.4.2 Rendering templates 3.4.3 Using npm for client-side dependencies 3.5 Summary Part 2 Web development with Node 4 Front-end build systems 4.1 Understanding front-end development with Node 4.2 Using npm to run scripts 4.2.1 Creating custom npm scripts 4.2.2 Configuring front-end build tools 4.3 Providing automation with Gulp 4.3.1 Adding Gulp to a project 4.3.2 Creating and running Gulp tasks 4.3.3 Watching for changes 4.3.4 Using separate files for larger projects 4.4 Building web apps with webpack 4.4.1 Using bundles and plugins 4.4.2 Configuring and running webpack 4.4.3 Using webpack development server 4.4.4 Loading CommonJS modules and assets 4.5 Summary 5 Server-side frameworks 5.1 Personas 5.1.1 Phil: agency developer 5.1.2 Nadine: open source developer 5.1.3 Alice: product developer 5.2 What is a framework? 5.3 Koa 5.3.1 Setting up 5.3.2 Defining routes 5.3.3 REST APIs 5.3.4 Strengths 5.3.5 Weaknesses 5.4 Kraken 5.4.1 Setting up 5.4.2 Defining routes 5.4.3 REST APIs 5.4.4 Strengths 5.4.5 Weaknesses 5.5 hapi 5.5.1 Setting up 5.5.2 Defining routes 5.5.3 Plugins 5.5.4 REST APIs 5.5.5 Strengths 5.5.6 Weaknesses 5.6 Sails.js 5.6.1 Setting up 5.6.2 Defining routes 5.6.3 REST APIs 5.6.4 Strengths 5.6.5 Weaknesses 5.7 DerbyJS 5.7.1 Setting up 5.7.2 Defining routes 5.7.3 REST APIs 5.7.4 Strengths 5.7.5 Weaknesses 5.8 Flatiron.js 5.8.1 Setting up 5.8.2 Defining routes 5.8.3 REST APIs 5.8.4 Strengths 5.8.5 Weaknesses 5.9 LoopBack 5.9.1 Setting up 5.9.2 Defining routes 5.9.3 REST APIs 5.9.4 Strengths 5.9.5 Weaknesses 5.10 Comparison 5.10.1 HTTP servers and routes 5.11 Writing modular code 5.12 Persona choices 5.13 Summary 6 Connect and Express in depth 6.1 Connect 6.1.1 Setting up a Connect application 6.1.2 Understanding how Connect middleware works 6.1.3 Combining middleware 6.1.4 Ordering middleware 6.1.5 Creating configurable middleware 6.1.6 Using error-handling middleware 6.2 Express 6.2.1 Generating the application skeleton 6.2.2 Configuring Express and your application 6.2.3 Rendering views 6.2.4 Express routing 101 6.2.5 Authenticating users 6.2.6 Registering new users 6.2.7 Logging in registered users 6.2.8 Working with user-loading middleware 6.2.9 Creating a public REST API 6.2.10 Enabling content negotiation 6.3 Summary 7 Web application templating 7.1 Using templating to keep code clean 7.1.1 Templating in action 7.1.2 Rendering HTML without a template 7.2 Templating with Embedded JavaScript 7.2.1 Creating a template 7.2.2 Integrating EJS into your application 7.2.3 Using EJS for client-side applications 7.3 Using the Mustache templating language with Hogan 7.3.1 Creating a template 7.3.2 Using Mustache tags 7.3.3 Fine-tuning Hogan 7.4 Templating with Pug 7.4.1 Pug basics 7.4.2 Logic in Pug templates 7.4.3 Organizing Pug templates 7.5 Summary 8 Storing application data 8.1 Relational databases 8.2 PostgreSQL 8.2.1 Performing installation and setup 8.2.2 Creating the database 8.2.3 Connecting to Postgres from Node 8.2.4 Defining tables 8.2.5 Inserting data 8.2.6 Updating data 8.2.7 Querying data 8.3 Knex 8.3.1 jQuery for databases 8.3.2 Connecting and running queries with Knex 8.3.3 Swapping the database back end 8.3.4 Beware of leaky abstractions 8.4 MySQL vs. PostgreSQL 8.5 ACID guarantees 8.5.1 Atomicity: transactions either succeed or fail in entirety 8.5.2 Consistency: constraints are always enforced 8.5.3 Isolation: concurrent transactions don’t interfere 8.5.4 Durability: transactions are permanent 8.6 NoSQL 8.7 Distributed databases 8.8 MongoDB 8.8.1 Performing installation and setup 8.8.2 Connecting to MongoDB 8.8.3 Inserting documents 8.8.4 Querying 8.8.5 Using MongoDB identifiers 8.8.6 Using replica sets 8.8.7 Understanding write concerns 8.9 Key/value stores 8.10 Redis 8.10.1 Performing installation and setup 8.10.2 Performing initialization 8.10.3 Working with key/value pairs 8.10.4 Working with keys 8.10.5 Encoding and data types 8.10.6 Using hashes 8.10.7 Using lists 8.10.8 Using sets 8.10.9 Providing pub/sub with channels 8.10.10 Improving Redis performance 8.11 Embedded databases 8.12 LevelDB 8.12.1 LevelUP and LevelDOWN 8.12.2 Installation 8.12.3 API overview 8.12.4 Initialization 8.12.5 Key/value encodings 8.12.6 Reading and writing key/value pairs 8.12.7 Pluggable back ends 8.12.8 The modular database 8.13 Serialization and deserialization are expensive 8.14 In-browser storage 8.14.1 Web storage: localStorage and sessionStorage 8.14.2 Reading and writing values 8.14.3 localForage 8.14.4 Reading and writing 8.15 Hosted storage 8.15.1 Simple Storage Service 8.16 Which database? 8.17 Summary 9 Testing Node applications 9.1 Unit testing 9.1.1 The assert module 9.1.2 Mocha 9.1.3 Vows 9.1.4 Chai 9.1.5 Should.js 9.1.6 Spies and stubs with Sinon.JS 9.2 Functional testing 9.2.1 Selenium 9.3 Dealing with failing tests 9.3.1 Getting more-detailed logs 9.3.2 Getting better stack traces 9.4 Summary 10 Deploying Node applications and maintaining uptime 10.1 Hosting Node applications 10.1.1 Platform as a service 10.1.2 Servers 10.1.3 Containers 10.2 Understanding deployment basics 10.2.1 Deploying from a Git repository 10.2.2 Keeping Node running 10.3 Maximizing uptime and performance 10.3.1 Maintaining uptime with Upstart 10.3.2 The cluster API: taking advantage of multiple cores 10.3.3 Hosting static files and proxying 10.4 Summary Part 3 Beyond web development 11 Writing command-line applications 11.1 Understanding conventions and philosophy 11.2 Introducing parse-json 11.3 Using command-line arguments 11.3.1 Parsing command-line arguments 11.3.2 Validating arguments 11.3.3 Passing stdin as a file 11.4 Sharing command-line tools with npm 11.5 Connecting scripts with pipes 11.5.1 Piping data into parse-json 11.5.2 Working with errors and exit codes 11.5.3 Using pipes in Node 11.5.4 Pipes and command execution order 11.6 Interpreting real-world scripts 11.7 Summary 12 Conquering the desktop with Electron 12.1 Introducing Electron 12.1.1 Electron’s stack 12.1.2 Interface design 12.2 Creating an Electron app 12.3 Building a full desktop application 12.3.1 Bootstrapping React and Babel 12.3.2 Installing the dependencies 12.3.3 Setting up webpack 12.4 The React app 12.4.1 Defining the Request component 12.4.2 Defining the Response component 12.4.3 Communicating between React components 12.5 Builds and distribution 12.5.1 Building with Electron Packager 12.5.2 Packaging 12.6 Summary appendix A Installing Node A.1 Installing Node by using an installer A.1.1 The macOS installer A.1.2 The Windows installer A.2 Using other ways to install Node A.2.1 Installing Node from source A.2.2 Installing Node with a package manager appendix B Automating the web with scraping B.1 Understanding web scraping B.1.1 Uses of web scraping B.1.2 Required tools B.2 Performing basic web scraping with cheerio B.3 Handling dynamic content with jsdom B.4 Making sense of raw data B.5 Summary appendix C Connect’s officially supported middleware C.1 Parsing cookies, request bodies, and query strings C.1.1 cookie-parser: parse HTTP cookies C.1.2 Parsing query strings C.1.3 body-parser: parse request bodies C.1.4 compression: compressing outgoing responses C.2 Implementing core web application functions C.2.1 morgan: log requests C.2.2 serve-favicon: address bar and bookmark icons C.2.3 method-override: fake HTTP methods C.2.4 vhost: virtual hosting C.2.5 express-session: session management C.3 Handling web application security C.3.1 basic-auth: HTTP Basic authentication C.3.2 csurf: cross-site request forgery protection C.3.3 errorhandler: displaying errors during development C.4 Serving static files C.4.1 serve-static: automatically serving files to the browser C.4.2 serve-index: generating directory listings Connect’s officially supported middleware Glossary Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 9 Chapter 10 Chapter 11 Chapter 12 Appendix A index Symbols Numerics A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z Node.js in Action, Second Edition, back Node.js in Action is an example-driven tutorial that starts at square one and guides you through all the features, techniques, and concepts you'll need to build production-quality Node applications. You'll start by learning how to set up your Node development environment, including loading the community-created extensions. Next, you'll run several simple demonstration programs where you'll learn the basics of a few common types of Node applications. Then you'll dive into asynchronous programming, a model Node leverages to lessen application bottlenecks

Node.js in Action, Second Edition is a thoroughly revised book based on the best-selling first edition. It starts at square one and guides you through all the features, techniques, and concepts you'll need to build production-quality Node applications.

Packed with practical examples, this book starts at square one and guides you through all the features, techniques, and concepts you'll need to build production-quality Node applications. -- Edited summary from book