Book Image

RESTful Web API Design with Node.js - Second Edition

By : Valentin Bojinov
Book Image

RESTful Web API Design with Node.js - Second Edition

By: Valentin Bojinov

Overview of this book

In this era of cloud computing, every data provisioning solution is built in a scalable and fail-safe way. Thus, when building RESTful services, the right choice for the underlying platform is vital. Node.js, with its asynchronous, event-driven architecture, is exactly the right choice to build RESTful APIs. This book will help you enrich your development skills to create scalable, server-side, RESTful applications based on the Node.js platform. Starting with the fundamentals of REST, you will understand why RESTful web services are better data provisioning solution than other technologies. You will start setting up a development environment by installing Node.js, Express.js, and other modules. Next, you will write a simple HTTP request handler and create and test Node.js modules using automated tests and mock objects. You will then have to choose the most appropriate data storage type, having options between a key/value or document data store, and also you will implement automated tests for it. This module will evolve chapter by chapter until it turns into a full-fledged and secure Restful service.
Table of Contents (12 chapters)
RESTful Web API Design with Node.js - Second Edition
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewer
www.PacktPub.com
Preface

Working with arbitrary data


MongoDB utilizes BSON as the primary data format. It is a binary format that can store no or many key/value pairs in a single entity called document; for example, a sample JSON, {"hello":"world"}, becomes \x16\x00\x00\x00\x02hello\x00\x06\x00\x00\x00world\x00\x00 when encoded in BSON.

The main advantage of BSON over JSON is that it actually stores data, not just literals. For instance, if a long integer number needs to be a part of the document, it will not have to be converted programmatically from a literal to a number. It is also useful when a document needs to have some data bound to it. JSON will usually represent such data as base64-encoded bytes, but that is obviously not the most efficient way.

Mongoose schemas enable storing binary content in the BSON format via the SchemaTypes buffer. It can store binary content (image, ZIP archive, and so on) up to 16 MB. The reason behind the limitation to storage size is rather historical as a means of prevention against...