Book Image

Professional JavaScript

By : Hugo Di Francesco, Siyuan Gao, Vinicius Isola, Philip Kirkbride
Book Image

Professional JavaScript

By: Hugo Di Francesco, Siyuan Gao, Vinicius Isola, Philip Kirkbride

Overview of this book

In depth knowledge of JavaScript makes it easier to learn a variety of other frameworks, including React, Angular, and related tools and libraries. This book is designed to help you cover the core JavaScript concepts you need to build modern applications. You'll start by learning how to represent an HTML document in the Document Object Model (DOM). Then, you'll combine your knowledge of the DOM and Node.js to create a web scraper for practical situations. As you read through further lessons, you'll create a Node.js-based RESTful API using the Express library for Node.js. You'll also understand how modular designs can be used for better reusability and collaboration with multiple developers on a single project. Later lessons will guide you through building unit tests, which ensure that the core functionality of your program is not affected over time. The book will also demonstrate how constructors, async/await, and events can load your applications quickly and efficiently. Finally, you'll gain useful insights into functional programming concepts such as immutability, pure functions, and higher-order functions. By the end of this book, you'll have the skills you need to tackle any real-world JavaScript development problem using a modern JavaScript approach, both for the client and server sides.
Table of Contents (12 chapters)

MongoDB

Many APIs make use of a database for keeping track of the underlying data being read and written by the API. In other cases, such as IoT, the functions at endpoints may update a real object. Even when a real object or event is being tracked or triggered, it is a good idea to track the expected state in a database. A database representation can be accessed and manipulated quickly.

We won't go into depth on the use and design of a database; however, we'll briefly talk about how you could use one to extend the functionality of an API. It is rare that you will have an API that goes beyond hello world without making use of a database of some sort.

The most popular database used with Node.js is MongoDB. MongoDB is an object-oriented library with a convenient syntax for working with JSON objects. In addition to storing data as JSON-like objects, it doesn't require the use of a schema. This means that the attributes for an object can change over time without you...