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)

Dynamic Client/Server Interaction with Socket.IO

The original design model of the web is similar to the way that mainframes worked in the 1970s. Both old-school dumb terminals, such as the IBM 3270, and web browsers, follow a request-response paradigm. The user sends a request and the far-off computer sends a response screen. While web browsers can show more complex information than old-school dumb terminals, the interaction pattern in both cases is a back and forth of user requests, each resulting in a screen of data sent by the server screen after screen or, in the case of web browsers, page after page.

In case you're wondering what this history lesson is about, that request-response paradigm is evident in the Node.js HTTP Server API, as shown in the following code:

http.createServer(function (request, response) {
... handle request
}).listen();

The paradigm...