Preface

Over the past few years, Node.js has found its way into the technology stack of Fortune 500 companies, mobile-first start-ups, successful Internet-based businesses, and other enterprises. In addition to validating its power as a platform, this success has exposed a shortage of tools for managing, deploying, and monitoring Node.js applications. Even though the Node.js community is open and collaborative, comprehensive information on how professional Node developers design, test, and push their code into production environments is hard to find.

This book is an attempt to close that gap in knowledge by explaining and documenting techniques and tools that working Node.js developers can use to create scalable, smart, robust, and maintainable software for the enterprise.

After a brief introduction to Node and the philosophy behind its design, you will learn how to install and update your applications on local servers and across the cloud. This foundation is then built upon by proceeding step by step through load balancing and other scaling techniques, explaining how to handle sudden changes in traffic volume and shape, implement version control, and design memory-efficient, stateful, distributed applications.

Once you've completed the groundwork essential to creating production-ready systems, you will need to test and deploy them. Filled with real-world code examples, this book is structured as a progressive workbook explaining strategies for success to be used during each stage of the testing, deploying, monitoring, and maintaining marathon that every successful piece of software runs.

When you've finished this book, you will have learned a set of reusable patterns directly applicable to solving the problems that you are dealing with today and will have laid the foundation to make confident decisions about how to build and deploy your next project.