Book Image

Learning Node.js Development

By : Andrew Mead
Book Image

Learning Node.js Development

By: Andrew Mead

Overview of this book

Learning Node.js Development is a practical, project-based book that provides you with all you need to get started as a Node.js developer. Node is a ubiquitous technology on the modern web, and an essential part of any web developers' toolkit. If you are looking to create real-world Node applications, or you want to switch careers or launch a side project to generate some extra income, then you're in the right place. This book has been written around a single goal—turning you into a professional Node developer capable of developing, testing, and deploying real-world production applications. Learning Node.js Development is built from the ground up around the latest version of Node.js (version 9.x.x). You'll be learning all the cutting-edge features available only in the latest software versions. This book cuts through the mass of information available around Node and delivers the essential skills that you need to become a Node developer. It takes you through creating complete apps and understanding how to build, deploy, and test your own Node apps. It maps out everything in a comprehensive, easy-to-follow package designed to get you up and running quickly.
Table of Contents (13 chapters)

Module basics

In this section, you will finally learn some Node.js code, and we'll kick things off by talking about modules inside Node. Modules are units of functionality, so imagine I create a few functions that do something similar, such as a few functions that help with math problems, for example, add, subtract, and divide. I could bundle those up as a module, call it Andrew-math, and other people could take advantage of it.

Now, we'll not be looking at how to make our own module; in fact, we will be looking at how we can use modules, and that will be done using a function in Node, called require(). The require() function will let us do three things:

  • First, it'll let us load in modules that come bundled with Node.js. These include the HTTP module, which lets us make a web server, and the fs module, which lets us access the filesystem for our machine.
We will...