Book Image

Node Cookbook

By : David Mark Clements
Book Image

Node Cookbook

By: David Mark Clements

Overview of this book

The principles of asynchronous event-driven programming are perfect for today's web, where efficient real-time applications and scalability are at the forefront. Server-side JavaScript has been here since the 90's but Node got it right. With a thriving community and interest from Internet giants, it could be the PHP of tomorrow. "Node Cookbook" shows you how to transfer your JavaScript skills to server side programming. With simple examples and supporting code, "Node Cookbook" talks you through various server side scenarios often saving you time, effort, and trouble by demonstrating best practices and showing you how to avoid security faux pas. Beginning with making your own web server, the practical recipes in this cookbook are designed to smoothly progress you to making full web applications, command line applications, and Node modules. Node Cookbook takes you through interfacing with various database backends such as MySQL, MongoDB and Redis, working with web sockets, and interfacing with network protocols, such as SMTP. Additionally, there are recipes on correctly performing heavy computations, security implementations, writing, your own Node modules and different ways to take your apps live.
Table of Contents (16 chapters)
Node Cookbook
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
Preface

Creating a test-driven module API


We're going to create our module by loosely following the test-driven development (TDD) model (See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Test-driven_development for more info). JavaScript is asynchronous so code can be executed in multiple time streams at once. This can sometimes make for a challenging mental puzzle.

A test suite is a particularly powerful tool when it comes to JavaScript development. It provides a quality assurance process and inspires confidence in a module's users base when tests are passed.

What's more, we can define our tests up front as a way to map out the intended API before we even begin development.

In this recipe, we'll be doing just that by creating a test suite for a module that extracts stats information from MP3 files.

Getting ready

Let's create a new folder called mp3dat, with a file inside called index.js. Then two subfolders: lib and test, both containing index.js.

We'll also need MP3 files to test on. For simplicity, our module will...