Table of Contents¶

Learning Node

A Note Regarding Supplemental Files

Preface

Not Your Ordinary JavaScript

Why Node?

This Book’s Intended Audience

How to Best Use This Book

The Technology

The Examples

Conventions Used in This Book

Using Code Examples

Safari® Books Online

How to Contact Us

Acknowledgments

Node.js: Up and Running

Setting Up a Node Development Environment

Installing Node on Linux (Ubuntu)

Partnering Node with WebMatrix on Windows 7

Updating Node

Node: Jumping In

Hello, World in Node

Hello, World from the Top

Asynchronous Functions and the Node Event Loop

Reading a File Asynchronously

Taking a Closer Look at Asynchronous Program Flow

Benefits of Node

Interactive Node with REPL

REPL: First Looks and Undefined Expressions

Benefits of REPL: Getting a Closer Understanding of JavaScript Under the Hood

Multiline and More Complex JavaScript

REPL Commands

REPL and rlwrap

Custom REPL

Stuff Happens—Save Often

The Node Core

Globals: global, process, and Buffer

global

process

Buffer

The Timers: setTimeout, clearTimeout, setInterval, and clearInterval

Servers, Streams, and Sockets

TCP Sockets and Servers

HTTP

UDP/Datagram Socket

Streams, Pipes, and Readline

Child Processes

child_process.spawn

child_process.exec and child_process.execFile

child_process.fork

Running a Child Process Application in Windows

Domain Resolution and URL Processing

The Utilities Module and Object Inheritance

Events and EventEmitter

The Node Module System

Loading a Module with require and Default Paths

External Modules and the Node Package Manager

Finding Modules

Colors: Simple Is Best

Optimist: Another Short and Simple Module

Underscore

Creating Your Own Custom Module

Packaging an Entire Directory

Preparing Your Module for Publication

Publishing the Module

Control Flow, Asynchronous Patterns, and Exception Handling

Promises, No Promises, Callback Instead

Sequential Functionality, Nested Callbacks, and Exception Handling

Asynchronous Patterns and Control Flow Modules

Step

Async

Node Style

Routing Traffic, Serving Files, and Middleware

Building a Simple Static File Server from Scratch

Middleware

Connect Basics

Connect Middleware

connect.static

connect.logger

connect.parseCookie and connect.cookieSession

Custom Connect Middleware

Routers

Proxies

The Express Framework

Express: Up and Running

The app.js File in More Detail

Error Handling

A Closer Look at the Express/Connect Partnership

Routing

Routing Path

Routing and HTTP Verbs

Cue the MVC

Testing the Express Application with cURL

Express, Template Systems, and CSS

The Embedded JavaScript (EJS) Template System

Learning the Basic Syntax

Using EJS with Node

Using the EJS for Node Filters

Using a Template System (EJS) with Express

Restructuring for a Multiple Object Environment

Routing to Static Files

Processing a New Object Post

Working with the Widgets Index and Generating a Picklist

Showing an Individual Object and Confirming an Object Deletion

Providing an Update Form and Processing a PUT Request

The Jade Template System

Taking the Nickel Tour of the Jade Syntax

Using block and extends to Modularize the View Templates

Converting the Widget Views into Jade Templates

Converting the main widgets display view

Converting the edit and deletion forms

Incorporating Stylus for Simplified CSS

Structured Data with Node and Redis

Getting Started with Node and Redis

Building a Game Leaderboard

Creating a Message Queue

Adding a Stats Middleware to an Express Application

Node and MongoDB: Document-Centric Data

The MongoDB Native Node.js Driver

Getting Started with MongoDB

Defining, Creating, and Dropping a MongoDB Collection

Adding Data to a Collection

Querying the Data

Using Updates, Upserts, and Find and Remove

Implementing a Widget Model with Mongoose

Refactoring the Widget Factory

Adding the MongoDB Backend

The Node Relational Database Bindings

Getting Started with db-mysql

Using Query String or Chained Methods

Updating the Database with Direct Queries

Updating the Database with Chained Methods

Native JavaScript MySQL Access with node-mysql

Basic CRUD with node-mysql

MySQL Transactions with mysql-queues

ORM Support with Sequelize

Defining a Model

Using CRUD, ORM Style

Adding Several Objects Easily

Overcoming Issues Related to Going from Relational to ORM

Graphics and HTML5 Video

Creating and Working with PDFs

Accessing PDF Tools with Child Processes

Taking page snapshots with wkhtmltopdf

Accessing data about a PDF file with PDF Toolkit

Creating a PDF uploader and dealing with graphics lag time

Creating PDFs with PDFKit

Accessing ImageMagick from a Child Process

Properly Serving HTML5 Video with HTTP

Creating and Streaming Canvas Content

WebSockets and Socket.IO

WebSockets

An Introduction to Socket.IO

A Simple Communication Example

WebSockets in an Asynchronous World

About That Client Code

Configuring Socket.IO

Chat: The WebSockets “Hello, World”

Using Socket.IO with Express

Testing and Debugging Node Applications

Debugging

The Node.js Debugger

Client-Side Debugging with Node Inspector

Unit Testing

Unit Testing with Assert

Unit Testing with Nodeunit

Other Testing Frameworks

Mocha

Jasmine

Vows

Acceptance Testing

Selenium Testing with Soda

Emulating a Browser with Tobi and Zombie

Performance Testing: Benchmarks and Load Tests

Benchmark Testing with ApacheBench

Load Testing with Nodeload

Refreshing Code with Nodemon

Guards at the Gate

Encrypting Data

Setting Up TSL/SSL

Working with HTTPS

Safely Storing Passwords

Authentication/Authorization with Passport

Authorization/Authentication Strategies: OAuth, OpenID, Username/Password Verification

The Local Passport Strategy

The Twitter Passport Strategy (OAuth)

Protecting Applications and Preventing Attacks

Don’t Use eval

Do Use Checkboxes, Radio Buttons, and Drop-Down Selections

Scrub Your Data and Sanitize It with node-validator

Sandboxed Code

Scaling and Deploying Node Applications

Deploying Your Node Application to Your Server

Writing That package.json File

Keeping Your Application Alive with Forever

Using Node and Apache Together

Improving Performance

Deployment to a Cloud Service

Deploying to Windows Azure via Cloud9 IDE

Joyent Development SmartMachines

Heroku

Amazon EC2

Nodejitsu

A. Node, Git, and GitHub

Index

About the Author

Colophon

Copyright

Learning Node

Shelley Powers

Published by O’Reilly Media

Beijing ⋅ Cambridge ⋅ Farnham ⋅ Köln ⋅ Sebastopol ⋅ Tokyo

A Note Regarding Supplemental Files

Supplemental files and examples for this book can be found at http://examples.oreilly.com/0636920024606/. Please use a standard desktop web browser to access these files, as they may not be accessible from all ereader devices.

All code files or examples referenced in the book will be available online. For physical books that ship with an accompanying disc, whenever possible, we’ve posted all CD/DVD content. Note that while we provide as much of the media content as we are able via free download, we are sometimes limited by licensing restrictions. Please direct any questions or concerns to booktech@oreilly.com.