In this book, we'll offer a beginner's introduction to Node and its related technologies, and get you under way writing your first Node applications.

Your First Week With Node.js, 2nd Edition

Preface

So you’ve heard of Node.js, but aren’t quite sure what it is or where it fits into your development workflow. Or maybe you’ve heard people singing Node’s praises and now you’re wondering if it’s something you need to learn. Perhaps you’re familiar with another back-end technology and want to find out what’s different about Node.

What Is Node and When Should I Use It?

You understand what Node.js is. You’ve read what it can do. Starting work on a real project is the best way to progress your Node.js knowhow!

Build a Simple Page Counter Service with Node.js

In programming, modules are self-contained units of functionality, which can be shared and reused across projects. They make our lives as developers easier, as we can use them to augment our applications with functionality that we haven’t had to write ourselves. They also allow us to organize and decouple our code, leading to applications that are easier to understand, debug and maintain.

Understanding module.exports and exports in Node.js

If you’re building a web application, you’re likely to encounter the need to build HTML forms on day one. They’re a big part of the web experience, and they can be complicated.

Forms, File Uploads and Security with Node.js and Express

In Chapter 2, we built a simple web service for a page view counter. The first implementation stores data in a JavaScript object, but counters are reset every time the service restarted. The second version stores data in files, but the process is convoluted and introduces further problems as usage increases.

Working with Databases in Node

In a non-trivial application, the architecture is as important as the quality of the code itself. We can have well-written pieces of code, but if we don’t have good organization, we’ll have a hard time as the complexity increases. There’s no need to wait until the project is half-way done to start thinking about the architecture; the best time is before starting, using our goals as beacons for our choices.

How to Build and Structure a Node.js MVC Application

A common requirement when building a web app is to implement a login system, so that users can authenticate themselves before gaining access to protected views or resources. Luckily for those building Node apps, there’s a middleware called Passport that can be dropped into any Express -based web application to provide authentication mechanisms in only a few commands.

Local Authentication Using Passport in Node.js

Software development is complex and, at some point, your Node.js application will fail. If you’re lucky , your code will crash with an obvious error message. If you’re unlucky, your application will carry on regardless but not generate the results you expect. If you’re really unlucky, everything will work fine until the first user discovers a catastrophic disk-wiping bug.

How to Debug a Node App

Does testing seem like an unwelcome intrusion on your development work day? Don’t worry, I get it.

Node Testing for Beginners

In 2020, there’s no reason for your website not to use HTTPS. Visitors expect it, Google uses it as a ranking factor and browser makers will happily name and shame those sites not using it.

How to Use SSL/TLS with Node.js

NGINX is a high-performance HTTP server as well as a reverse proxy . Unlike traditional servers, NGINX follows an event-driven, asynchronous architecture. As a result, the memory footprint is low and performance is high. If you’re running a Node.js-based web app, you should seriously consider using NGINX as a reverse proxy.

Configuring NGINX and SSL with Node.js

Node.js applications rarely exist in isolation. You could require a database, caching, message queues, reverse proxies, search, email routing, process monitoring, other language runtimes and more! Managing these dependencies on your development PC becomes significantly easier with Docker.

Community Questions