Read:06 | Node.js

Website: Intro to Node on Sitepoint

Notes on Node.js

• Node.js basically translates your JS files into binary for a server to read

By the end of this article, hopefully StackOverflow’s definition will make sense:
Node.js is an event-based non-blocking asynchronous I/O runtime that uses Google’s V8 JavaScript engine and libuv

• Node is built on Google Chrome’s V8 open-source JS engine
• Use a version manager to grab Node binaries for your system
  • It negates potential permission issues when using Node with npm
  • Lets you set a Node version on a per-project basis
• You can check what version of Node is installed by typing node -v
• You can run your file with Node by typing node hello.js
• Node comes bundled with a package manager called npm. You can check which version you have installed by using npm -v.
• To globally install a package, you use -g like this: npm install -g jshint
• To learn about linting, see this article: A Comparison of JavaScript Linting Tools
• npm init will create a package.json file in whatever folder you are in.
• If you run npm install it will create the node_modules folder, which contains any libraries that are referenced as dependencides in your package.json
• Also check out A Beginner’s Guide to npm — the Node Package Manager.
• Basically, installing (is the purpose of npm) and running (is the purpose of node) various build tools for developing a modern JS application.
• To develop with a JS framework like React you must know how to use Node and npm (and maybe yarn)
• The biggest use case for Node.js is for running JS on the server

• Here’s an image that explains the event-driven aspect of Node.js:

  

• Node’s execution model causes the server very little overhead, which makes it capable of handling a lot of simultaneous connections:

  

• The arrival of ES6’s native Promises followed closely by async/await minimizes the downside of Node (excessive callbacks).
• Node has a native http module that uses the createServer method.
  • It takes an anonymous function with 2 arguments: request and response.
  • This function is invoked every time a new connection is made to the server.
  • We tell the server to listen on a particular port number and have it output a message to let us know it is running.

  

• Node is used for building applications that require real-time interaction like chat sites.
• There are various frameworks that can reduce the boilerplate, like express.
  • If you want to do anything out of the ordinary you need to pull in additional modules with npm.
• Node’s big plus is that is speaks JSON, which is the language used for interacting with object databases (like MongoDB).

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