Jeff Andersen from GoInstant Have you ever thought that writing web applications should allow you to use your mad Javascript skillz on the server side as well? Node.js is such a platform. Bundling up the Google Chrome Javascript runtime, Node lets you easily building fast and scalable network applications perfect for the real-time web. It's also a pretty great platform for building basic data driven websites too. Jeff, a web developer at Halifax based GoInstant, will introduce us to the Node platform, exploring it from the ground up.

2. HELLO WORLD

3. Jeff Andersen
Developer
Twitter: @jeffandersen
Email: jeff@goinstant.com

5. What is Node.js?
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In a nutshell: server-side JavaScript
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Used to build scalable network applications
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Built on Google’s v8 JavaScript engine
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Event-driven, non-blocking (asynchronous) I/O

6. Who uses it?

7. Installing Node.js
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Visit nodejs.org
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Download the package/installer and run
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Alternatively: use nvm - Node Version Manager
(Similar to Ruby’s RVM)
https://github.com/creationix/nvm

8. Test out the repl
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From the command line type `node`
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Type out commands and hit enter

9. Use cases
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REST APIs
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Streaming data
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High concurrency
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Leveraging UNIX tools
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Realtime applications

10. Event Driven

11. Event Driven

12. Sync vs Async

13. Synchronous
(Blocking)

14. Asynchronous
(Non-Blocking)

15. Asynchronous
(Non-Blocking)
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Node is built for async i/o
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Sometimes difficult to understand
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Callback soup

16. Let’s run it

17. HTTP Server

18. 5 lines of code
Let’s run it

19. HTTP Server

20. Community / Ecosystem
http://notinventedhe.re/on/2011-7-26

21. •
npmjs.org
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Open source software
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Official package manager for Node.js
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Nearly 55 thousand packages and almost 2.5
million downloads per day
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package.json

22. Package.json

23. npm install

24. Recommended Modules
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async - Higher-order functions and common patterns for
asynchronous code
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lodash - A utility library delivering consistency, customization,
performance, & extras.
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express - Sinatra inspired web development framework
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mocha - simple, flexible, fun test framework
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pg - PostgreSQL client
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redis - Redis client

25. Example app

26. Example app
Basic REST api

27. What do we need?
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HTTP server
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Postgres database
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Postgres client
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JSON formatted responses

28. We have an HTTP server

29. Problems?
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One handler replying to every request
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Missing
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Routing/URL parameters
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Response formatting

30. Introducing Express
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npm install express
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Sinatra style web framework
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Simple verb-based request handlers
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Full-featured router
•
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body parser, url parameters, query string parsing
Automatic response formatting

31. Same functionality

32. Let’s code

33. What could be added?
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OAuth middleware
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Middleware: A function that processes a request, typically on
an interim basis to the final request handler.
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Permissions & token scopes
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JSON web hooks

34. Twitter recommendations
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@izs - Isaac Schlueter, Creator of NPM & Node core gate keeper
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@eranhammer - Eran Hammer, Walmart Labs & OSS contributor
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@substack - James Halliday, Node module authoring machine
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@tjholowaychuk - TJ Holowaychuk, Author: Express, Mocha, etc
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@igrigorik - Ilya Grigorik, Developer advocate at Google
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@jeresig - John Resig, Creator of jQuery
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@goinstant - Realtime Collaboration API and Backend