JavaScript on the Server
I was introduced to Node as "JavaScript on the Server".
Node on the server allows for 1 cross-application lanugage, JavaScript, to be writable in a web browsers and on servers.
A Robust built-In Module Ecosystem
Not only does node give us the ability to run JavaScript on the server, but Node has built-in "modules" that JavaScript in the browser does not have:
- fs gives file-system access
- http & https gives server-creation ability
- cluster allows for launching node while leveraging several cores of a system
- child_process allows for "spawning" other processes besides the main running thread
- debugger is a cli debugging utility: see debugging
- events allow for quick-and-easy event-driven system development with "emitters" and "listeners"
- os is a utility tool that can gather stats about the Operating System
- path is an all-encompassing tool for dealing with files & directories and their paths
- process gives access to and information about the running node process
- readline allows for interpreting stream-based input, most commonly in practice with the command-line input
- stream is a verbose tool allowing for handling streaming data like fs content, and http network response content (and many more!)
- string_decoder allows for converting buffers to strings
- util is an all-encompassing module with a bunch of properties
- zlib allows for compression & decompression of content
A Few Basic Commands
Get The Node Version
node --version && node -v will show the version of node installed, something like v18.14.2
Get The NPM Version
npm --version && npm -v will show the version of node installed, something like 9.5.0.
Build An HTTP Server
Here is a brief rundown on building an http server using node.
TL;DR: Listen for requests and serve up some content.
Coming Soon
- CRUD operations on a filesystem
- async workflows using callbacks, promises, and async/await syntax
- Buffers: allocation, encoding & decoding strings
- Watching directories
- Errors
- Events & an event-driven setup
- Scaling a node server leveraging the cluster module
- Streams: read, write, pipelines, duplex, transform