Book Image

Getting Started with RethinkDB

By : Gianluca Tiepolo
Book Image

Getting Started with RethinkDB

By: Gianluca Tiepolo

Overview of this book

RethinkDB is a high-performance document-oriented database with a unique set of features. This increasingly popular NoSQL database is used to develop real-time web applications and, together with Node.js, it can be used to easily deploy them to the cloud with very little difficulty. Getting Started with RethinkDB is designed to get you working with RethinkDB as quickly as possible. Starting with the installation and configuration process, you will learn how to start importing data into the database and run simple queries using the intuitive ReQL query language. After successfully running a few simple queries, you will be introduced to other topics such as clustering and sharding. You will get to know how to set up a cluster of RethinkDB nodes and spread database load across multiple machines. We will then move on to advanced queries and optimization techniques. You will discover how to work with RethinkDB from a Node.js environment and find out all about deployment techniques. Finally, we’ll finish by working on a fully-fledged example that uses the Node.js framework and advanced features such as Changefeeds to develop a real-time web application.
Table of Contents (15 chapters)
Getting Started with RethinkDB
Credits
About the Author
Acknowledgement
About the Reviewer
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Index

Creating the Node.js server


The first step in developing the notes web application is coding the HTTP server that will serve the clients' requests, so we're going to start with the app.js file.

The HTTP server relies on the Express.js module, so we first need to import the module and all other modules that will be used in the app.

Take a look at the following code:

var express = require('express'),
app = express(),
server = require('http').createServer(app),
io = require('socket.io')(server),
path = require('path'),
bodyParser = require('body-parser'),
model = require('./models/rethinkdb');

These seven lines actually do quite a bit of work! Let's go through them line by line.

The first line imports the Express.js module and makes it accessible through the express variable so that we can use it in the script.

Line number two creates a new instance of an Express.js app, while line three imports the http module and uses the app variable to create an instance of an HTTP server.

Line number four imports...