Book Image

Hands-on JavaScript for Python Developers

By : Sonyl Nagale
Book Image

Hands-on JavaScript for Python Developers

By: Sonyl Nagale

Overview of this book

Knowledge of Python is a great foundation for learning other languages. This book will help you advance in your software engineering career by leveraging your Python programming skills to learn JavaScript and apply its unique features not only for frontend web development but also for streamlining work on the backend. Starting with the basics of JavaScript, you’ll cover its syntax, its use in the browser, and its frameworks and libraries. From working with user interactions and ingesting data from APIs through to creating APIs with Node.js, this book will help you get up and running with JavaScript using hands-on exercises, code snippets, and detailed descriptions of JavaScript implementation and benefits. To understand the use of JavaScript in the backend, you’ll explore Node.js and discover how it communicates with databases. As you advance, you’ll get to grips with creating your own RESTful APIs and connecting the frontend and backend for holistic full-stack development knowledge. By the end of this Python JavaScript book, you’ll have the knowledge you need to write full-fledged web applications from start to finish. You’ll have also gained hands-on experience of working through several projects, which will help you advance in your career as a JavaScript developer.
Table of Contents (26 chapters)
1
Section 1 - What is JavaScript? What is it not?
6
Section 2 - Using JavaScript on the Front-End
13
Section 3 - The Back-End: Node.js vs. Python
20
Section 4 - Communicating with Databases

.gitignore and environment variables for credentials

As we've been working with .env files, I've made it a point to note that these files should never be committed to the repository. In fact, a good practice is to add an entry to your .gitignore file before you create any sensitive files to ensure you never accidentally commit your credentials. Even if you later delete it from your repository, the file history is maintained and you'll have to invalidate (or cycle) those keys so that they are not exposed in history.

While a full section on Git is beyond the scope of our work here, let's take a look at an example of a .gitignore file:

# See https://help.github.com/articles/ignoring-files/ for more about ignoring files.

# dependencies
/node_modules
/.pnp
.pnp.js

# testing
/coverage

# production
/build

# misc
.DS_Store
.env*

npm-debug.log*
yarn-debug.log*
yarn-error.log*

Several of these are entries created by the create-react-app scaffold. Note specifically .env*. The asterisk (or...