Throughout this book, we'll explore different ways to build Node.js Applications and understand what elements make up a basic blog page using MVC design patterns. We will learn how to deal with different types of view templates such as EJS and SWIG and more complex stuff using command-line tools to deploy and run applications.

We will cover fundamental concepts of the Restful API architecture and client-side communication using jQuery, React.js and Angular.js.

Although some points are advanced, you'll be prepared to understand the core concepts of Node.js applications, and how to deal with different types of database's such as MongoDB, MySQL, and the Express and Loopback frameworks.

Chapter 1 , Building a Twitter-Like Application Using MVC Design Patterns, shows the main concepts of the MVC pattern applied to Node.js applications using the Express framework, mongoose ODM middleware, and MongoDB database. We see how to deal with user sessions and authentication using Passport middleware.

Chapter 2 , Building a Basic Website Using MySQL Database, is a real dive into a Node.js application using a relational database. We see how to use the Sequelize (ORM)  middleware with Mysql database, how to create database relationships, and how to use migration files.

Chapter 3 , Building a Multimedia Application, teaches you how to deal with file storage and upload multimedia files such as images and videos. We also see how to save filenames on MongoDB and how to retrieve the files and show them on user interface. Then we learn how to deal with write and read using the Node.js streams API.

Chapter 4 , Don't Take a Photograph, Make It – An App for Photographers, covers an application to upload, store, and manipulate images using the Cloudnary cloud services, and interacting with MongoDB. Also, we will see how to implement the Materialize.css framework for the user interface, and introduce the use of dot files to load configuration variable.

Chapter 5 , Creating a Store Locator Application with MongoDB Geospatial Query, explains the core concepts of geospatial data and geolocation using MongoDB, and one of the most useful features to support GEOJSON data format, the 2dspheres indexes. You will understand how to integrate Google Maps API with a Node.js application.

Chapter 6 , Building a Customer Feedback App with Restful API and Loopback.io, explores the loopback.io framework to build a Restful API. We will see the fundamentals of the Loopback CLI in order to create an entire application using the command line. You'll learn how to deal with the relationship between models using MongoDB and how to use React.js on the client side to communicate with the API.

Chapter 7 , Building a Real-Time Chat Application with Socket.io, shows the fundamentals of Socket.io events to build a chat application using Express and jQuery for the user interface. It covers the basic concept of task managers and how to use Gulp and livereload plugin.

Chapter 8 , Creating a Blog with Keystone CMS, discusses the use of a CMS made entirely with Node.js, called Keystone. It's a deep dive into the Keystone application structure and how to extend the framework in order to create new models and views. Also, we will see how to customize and create new Keystone themes.

Chapter 9 , Building a Frontend Process with Node.js and NPM, is especially interesting because we will create a Restful application using the loopback.io framework and AngularJS for the user interface. Also, we will use different building tools to concatenate, minify, and optimize images using the command line and Node Package Manager (NPM). And we will see how to use the Heroku toolbelt CLI to create and deploy the application.

Chapter 10 , Creating and Deploying Using Continuous Integration and Docker, explores the continuous delivery development process with Node.js applications. You will learn how to integrate tools such as Github, Codeship, and Heroku into your development environment to deal with unit tests and automated deployment. This chpater also teaches you how to set up environment variables to protect your database credentials and how to create a full application using the concept of Docker containers.

All the examples in the book use open source solutions and can be downloaded for free from the links provided in each chapter.

The book's examples use many Node.js modules and some JavaScript libraries, such as jQuery, React.js, and AngularJS. The most current versions when writing this book are Node.js 5.6 and 6.1.

In chapter 1, Building a Twitter-Like Application Using the MVC Design Pattern, you can follow the step-by-step guide to install Node and Node Package Manager (NPM).

You can use your preferred HTML editor.

A modern browser will be very helpful too. We've used  Chrome, but feel free to use your preference. We recommend one of these: Safari, Firefox, Chrome, IE, or Opera, all in their latest versions.

You must have basic to intermediate knowledge of JavaScript, HTML, and CSS to follow the examples in the book, but slightly more advanced knowledge in web development/Restful APIs and Node.js modules/middleware may be required in some chapters. Do not worry about it; with the examples, we will detail all of the code and give you a lot of links to interesting stuff.

In this book, you will find a number of styles of text that distinguish between different kinds of information. Here are some examples of these styles, and an explanation of their meaning.

Code words in text are shown as follows:

Before we proceed, let's change the welcome message from: routes/index.js file to the following highlighted code.

A block of code is set as follows:

/* GET home page. */
router.get('/', function(req, res, next) {
    res.render('index', { title: 'Express from server folder' });
});

When we wish to draw your attention to a particular part of a code block, the relevant lines or items are set in bold:

/* GET home page. */
router.get('/', function(req, res, next) {
    res.render('index', { title: 'Express from server folder' });
});

New terms and important words are shown in bold. Words that you see on the screen, in menus or dialog boxes for example, appear in the text like this: "clicking on the Next button moves you to the next screen".

Warnings or important notes appear in a box like this.

Tips and tricks appear like this.

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