Book Image

Node.js Web Development - Third Edition

By : David Herron
Book Image

Node.js Web Development - Third 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. Node.js Web Development shows JavaScript is not just for browser-side applications. It can be used for server-side web application development, real-time applications, microservices, and much more. 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 and maintain your own Node.js application. 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 much more.
Table of Contents (18 chapters)
Node.js Web Development Third Edition
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewer
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Index

Getting started with Express


Express is perhaps the most popular Node.js web app framework. It's so popular that it's part of the MEAN Stack acronym. MEAN refers to MongoDB, ExpressJS, AngularJS, and Node.js. Express is described as being Sinatra-like, referring to a popular Ruby application framework, and that it isn't very opinionated. This means Express is not at all strict about how your code is structured; you just write it the way you think is best.

You can visit the home page for Express at http://expressjs.com/.

Shortly, we'll implement a simple application to calculate Fibonacci numbers using Express, and in later chapters, we'll do quite a bit more with Express. We'll also explore how to mitigate the performance problems from computationally intensive code we discussed earlier.

Let's start by installing the Express Generator. While we can just start writing some code, the Express Generator gives a blank starting application. We'll take that and modify it.

Install it using following...