Book Image

CoffeeScript Application Development

By : Ian Greenleaf Young
Book Image

CoffeeScript Application Development

By: Ian Greenleaf Young

Overview of this book

JavaScript is becoming one of the key languages in web development. It is now more important than ever across a growing list of platforms. CoffeeScript puts the fun back into JavaScript programming with elegant syntax and powerful features. CoffeeScript Application Development will give you an in-depth look at the CoffeeScript language, all while building a working web application. Along the way, you'll see all the great features CoffeeScript has to offer, and learn how to use them to deal with real problems like sprawling codebases, incomplete data, and asynchronous web requests. Through the course of this book you will learn the CoffeeScript syntax and see it demonstrated with simple examples. As you go, you'll put your new skills into practice by building a web application, piece by piece. You'll start with standard language features such as loops, functions, and string manipulation. Then, we'll delve into advanced features like classes and inheritance. Learn advanced idioms to deal with common occurrences like external web requests, and hone your technique for development tasks like debugging and refactoring. CoffeeScript Application Development will teach you not only how to write CoffeeScript, but also how to build solid applications that run smoothly and are a pleasure to maintain.
Table of Contents (19 chapters)
CoffeeScript Application Development
Credits
About the Author
Acknowledgements
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Index

Chapter 1. Running a CoffeeScript Program

The very first thing we need to do in order to start using CoffeeScript is to install CoffeeScript itself. This will give us access to the CoffeeScript compiler, which we'll use to compile our beautiful CoffeeScript code into JavaScript that can be run in a browser (or other JavaScript environment). By the end of this chapter we'll be completely set up and ready to work.

There are a couple of steps involved in installing CoffeeScript. I know you're impatient to dive right into this great new language—who can blame you? But we'll have to stick it out through a little bit of system configuration. If we do so, we'll be rewarded with a stable CoffeeScript setup that works flawlessly and doesn't take any more of our attention.

In this chapter we will:

  • Install the software that you need to run CoffeeScript code

  • Learn how to use the software to run CoffeeScript, both from the command line and in a browser

  • Use our new abilities to write a simple web application using CoffeeScript