Book Image

Professional JavaScript

By : Hugo Di Francesco, Siyuan Gao, Vinicius Isola, Philip Kirkbride
Book Image

Professional JavaScript

By: Hugo Di Francesco, Siyuan Gao, Vinicius Isola, Philip Kirkbride

Overview of this book

In depth knowledge of JavaScript makes it easier to learn a variety of other frameworks, including React, Angular, and related tools and libraries. This book is designed to help you cover the core JavaScript concepts you need to build modern applications. You'll start by learning how to represent an HTML document in the Document Object Model (DOM). Then, you'll combine your knowledge of the DOM and Node.js to create a web scraper for practical situations. As you read through further lessons, you'll create a Node.js-based RESTful API using the Express library for Node.js. You'll also understand how modular designs can be used for better reusability and collaboration with multiple developers on a single project. Later lessons will guide you through building unit tests, which ensure that the core functionality of your program is not affected over time. The book will also demonstrate how constructors, async/await, and events can load your applications quickly and efficiently. Finally, you'll gain useful insights into functional programming concepts such as immutability, pure functions, and higher-order functions. By the end of this book, you'll have the skills you need to tackle any real-world JavaScript development problem using a modern JavaScript approach, both for the client and server sides.
Table of Contents (12 chapters)

Useful Defaults and Easy Inputs

So, we've seen how enforcing restrictions on inputs to an endpoint can be helpful. However, excessive restrictions and requirements can hinder the user experience of an API. Let's take a closer look at the lightbulb fade action. In order to allow for the feature of fading over a period of time, we require the user to pass a value for the duration. Many people already have experience of using a fade action on a physical lightbulb.

With a physical lightbulb, we know that we input our desired brightness level by adjusting a physical switch or other input. The duration is not necessarily part of that process or consciously thought about by the user. This creates the expectation that you should be able to fade the light by only the desired level.

For this reason, we should consider making the duration value optional. In the case that a duration value is not received, the script will fall back to a default value. This allows us to meet user...