Book Image

Server Side development with Node.js and Koa.js Quick Start Guide

By : Olayinka Omole
Book Image

Server Side development with Node.js and Koa.js Quick Start Guide

By: Olayinka Omole

Overview of this book

Every developer wants to build modular and scalable web applications. Modern versions of JavaScript have made this possible in Node.js, and Koa is a Node.js framework that makes it easy. This book is the ideal introduction for JavaScript developers who want to create scalable server side applications using Node.js and Koa.js. The book shows you how Koa can be used to start projects from scratch, register custom and existing middleware, read requests, and send responses to users. We will explore the core concepts in Koa, such as error handling, logging, and request and response handling. We will dive into new concepts in JavaScript development, and see how paradigms such as async/await help with modern Node.js application development. By the end of this book, you will be building robust web applications in Koa using modern development paradigms and techniques of Node.js development.
Table of Contents (8 chapters)

Using Babel

If you're using an older version of Node (< 7.6), you will need to use a transpiler such as Babel to make async functions compatible with your version of Node. Koa recommends using Babel's require hook, as seen in the example in the following code snippet (https://babeljs.io/docs/en/babel-register/):

require('babel-register');

// require the rest of the app that needs to be transpiled after the hook

const app = require('./app');

You can then install the transforms you would need, depending on your version of Node. If you are using V6 of Node, you would not need most of the transforms, since it already supports a lot of ES6 features. At the minimum though, you would need the transform-async-to-generator plugin. You can define this in your .babelrc file, as follows:

{
"plugins": ["transform-async-to-generator"]
}

According...