Book Image

Node.js Design Patterns

By : Mario Casciaro
Book Image

Node.js Design Patterns

By: Mario Casciaro

Overview of this book

Node.js is a massively popular software platform that lets you use JavaScript to easily create scalable server-side applications. It allows you to create efficient code, enabling a more sustainable way of writing software made of only one language across the full stack, along with extreme levels of reusability, pragmatism, simplicity, and collaboration. Node.js is revolutionizing the web and the way people and companies create their software. In this book, we will take you on a journey across various ideas and components, and the challenges you would commonly encounter while designing and developing software using the Node.js platform. You will also discover the "Node.js way" of dealing with design and coding decisions. The book kicks off by exploring the fundamental principles and components that define the platform. It then shows you how to master asynchronous programming and how to design elegant and reusable components using well-known patterns and techniques. The book rounds off by teaching you the various approaches to scale, distribute, and integrate your Node.js application.
Table of Contents (16 chapters)
Node.js Design Patterns
Credits
About the Author
Acknowledgments
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Index

Using plain JavaScript


Now that we have met our first example of callback hell, we know what we should definitely avoid; however, that's not the only concern when writing asynchronous code. In fact, there are several situations where controlling the flow of a set of asynchronous tasks requires the use of specific patterns and techniques, especially if we are using only plain JavaScript without the aid of any external library. For example, iterating over a collection by applying an asynchronous operation in sequence is not as easy as invoking forEach() over an array, but it actually requires a technique similar to a recursion.

In this section, we will learn not only about how to avoid the callback hell but also about how to implement some of the most common control flow patterns using only simple and plain JavaScript.

Callback discipline

When writing asynchronous code, the first rule to keep in mind is to not abuse closures when defining callbacks. It can be tempting to do so, because it does...