Book Image

Getting Started with Meteor.js JavaScript Framework

By : Isaac Strack
Book Image

Getting Started with Meteor.js JavaScript Framework

By: Isaac Strack

Overview of this book

<p>Meteor is a brand new platform built entirely in JavaScript that allows you to build modern, dynamic web applications in the blink of an eye. With support for nearly every popular JavaScript framework (and more being added every day), Meteor provides you with the ability to quickly and easily develop sophisticated and stylish web applications.<br /><br />"Getting Started with Meteor" is an easy to follow, step-by-step approach to learning how to build modern web applications with Meteor. Through the development of a complete and ready-to-use application, you will experience exactly how easy and fast it can be to develop robust, flexible web applications, so you can build your own “killer” app in no time.<br /><br />"Getting Started with Meteor" will walk you step-by-step through all the major advantages that Meteor has to offer. You’ll be up and running in less than two minutes, and will develop an actual application you can use. As you move quickly through the exercises, you’ll be able to experience first-hand how easy it is to develop in Meteor, and will gain invaluable best practices you can apply immediately to your coding projects.<br /><br />You will learn about reactive programming and how Meteor takes advantage of the latest web technologies. You will gain a solid understanding of what&nbsp; the best design patterns are for developing web apps, and when to use them. You will learn how Meteor uses HTML templates and NoSQL (document-based) databases together to make coding applications simple and fun. Finally, you’ll gain best practices for security and performance, making your web applications fast, secure, and easy to use. If you want to build a web application but hate how difficult it seems to be, this book will show you the easy way to build and deploy modern web apps.<br /><br />This book will teach you everything you need to know to get up and running with Meteor, and start you on your way to becoming an expert web applications developer.</p>
Table of Contents (14 chapters)

Document-oriented storage


Meteor uses a version of MongoDB (minimongo), to store all of the data from your models. It's capable of using any other NoSQL/document-oriented database, but MongoDB comes by default with the Meteor installation. This feature makes your programs much simpler and easier to write, and works really well for quick, lightweight data storage.

But why not use a relational database

Traditionally, data is stored using a relational model. The relational model, with all of its associated rules, relations, logic, and syntax is an integral and invaluable part of modern computing. The rigid structure of a relational database, with exact requirements for each record, relation, and association, provides us with quick searches, scalability, and the possibility for deep analytics.

That type of exactness, however, isn't always necessary. In the case of our Lending Library, for example, a full-fledged relational database would be overkill. In fact, in some cases, it's more effective...