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)

HTTP server applications


The HTTP server object is the foundation of all Node.js web applications. The object itself is very close to the HTTP protocol, and its use requires knowledge of that protocol. In most cases, you'll be able to use an application framework such as Express that hides the HTTP protocol details, allowing the programmer to focus on business logic.

We already saw a simple HTTP server application in Chapter 2, Setting up Node.js, which is as follows:

const http = require('http'); 
http.createServer((req, res) => { 
  res.writeHead(200, {'Content-Type': 'text/plain'}); 
  res.end('Hello, World!\n'); 
}).listen(8124, '127.0.0.1'); 
console.log('Server running at http://127.0.0.1:8124'); 

The http.createServer function creates an http.Server object. Because it is an EventEmitter, this can be written in another way to make that fact explicit:

const http = require('http'); 
const server = http.createServer(); 
server.on('request',  (req, res) => { 
  res.writeHead(200, {'Content...