Book Image

Node.js Web Development - Fourth Edition

By : David Herron
Book Image

Node.js Web Development - Fourth Edition

By: David Herron

Overview of this book

Node.js is a server-side JavaScript platform using an event-driven, non-blocking I/O model allowing users to build fast and scalable data-intensive applications running in real time. This book gives you an excellent starting point, bringing you straight to the heart of developing web applications with Node.js. You will progress from a rudimentary knowledge of JavaScript and server-side development to being able to create, maintain, deploy and test your own Node.js application.You will understand the importance of transitioning to functions that return Promise objects, and the difference between fs, fs/promises and fs-extra. With this book you'll learn how to use the HTTP Server and Client objects, data storage with both SQL and MongoDB databases, real-time applications with Socket.IO, mobile-first theming with Bootstrap, microservice deployment with Docker, authenticating against third-party services using OAuth, and use some well known tools to beef up security of Express 4.16 applications.
Table of Contents (14 chapters)

Installing multiple Node.js instances with nvm


Normally, you won't install multiple versions of Node.js and doing so adds complexity to your system. But if you are hacking on Node.js itself, or are testing your software against different Node.js releases, you may want to have multiple Node.js installations. The method to do so is a simple variation on what we've already discussed.

Earlier, while discussing building Node.js from source, we noted that one can install multiple Node.js instances in separate directories. It's only necessary to build from source if you need a customized Node.js build, and most folks will be satisfied with pre-built Node.js binaries. They, too, can be installed into separate directories.

To switch between Node.js versions is simply a matter of changing the PATH variable (on POSIX systems), as follows, using the directory where you installed Node.js:

$ export PATH=/usr/local/node/VERSION-NUMBER/bin:${PATH} 

It starts to be a little tedious to maintain this after a while...