NodeJS

Contents
Introduction ..................................................................................................................................................3
What is NodeJS?............................................................................................................................................4
Why NodeJS? ................................................................................................................................................6
History of NodeJS..........................................................................................................................................8
How Does It Work? .......................................................................................................................................9
NPM: The Node Package Manager .............................................................................................................11
Where Node.js Can Be Used.......................................................................................................................12
Where Node.js Shouldn’t Be Used..............................................................................................................13
Fundamentals of NodeJS ............................................................................................................................14
Installing NodeJS.........................................................................................................................................21
Let’s Say Hello to NodeJS............................................................................................................................21
NODE.JS AND EXPRESS - CREATING A REST API..........................................................................................25
Express application generator ....................................................................................................................31
Taking Baby Steps with Node.js – Debugging with node-inspector ...........................................................34
Summarizing NodeJS...................................................................................................................................38

Introduction
About this module
This module provides students with the knowledge and skills that are needed to
develop applications by using the NodeJS.
Target Audience
This module is designed for beginners of NodeJS who are expected to know the basic
concepts of Javascript.
Module Objectives
After completing this module handout, you will be able to:
 Describe the features and characteristics of NodeJS
o What is NodeJS?
o Why NodeJS?
o What advantage does NodeJS brings in?
 Define NodeJS
 Create a NodeJS application
 Run and Debug a NodeJS application
Pre-requisite
The prerequisite of NodeJS is knowledge in concepts of Javascript.

What is NodeJS?
Node.js® is a platform built on Chrome's JavaScript runtime for easily building
fast, scalable network applications. Node.js uses an event-driven, non-blocking I/O
model that makes it lightweight and efficient, perfect for data-intensive real-time
applications that run across distributed devices.
Chances are good that you are familiar with asynchronous programming; it is, after all,
the "A" in Ajax. Every function in Node.js is asynchronous. Therefore, everything that
would normally block the thread is instead executed in the background. This is the most
important thing to remember about Node.js. For example, if you are reading a file on
the file system, you have to specify a callback function that is executed when the read
operation has completed.
You are Doing Everything!
Node.js is only an environment - meaning that you have to do everything yourself.
There is not a default HTTP server, or any server for that matter. This can be
overwhelming for new users, but the payoff is a high performing web app. One script
handles all communication with the clients. This considerably reduces the number of
resources used by the application.
Node.js is an open source project designed to help you write JavaScript programs that
talk to networks, file systems or other I/O (input/output, reading/writing) sources. That's
it! It is just a simple and stable I/O platform that you are encouraged to build modules
on top of.
What are some examples of I/O? Here is a diagram of an application that shows many
I/O sources:

The point is to show that a single node process (the hexagon in the middle) can act as
the broker between all of the different I/O endpoints (orange and purple represent I/O).
Usually building these kinds of systems is either:
 difficult to code but yields superfast results (like writing your web servers from
scratch in C)
 easy to code but not very speedy/robust (like when someone tries to upload a
5GB file and your server crashes)
Node's goal is to strike a balance between these two: relatively easy to understand and
use and fast enough for most use cases.
Node isn't either of the following:
 A web framework (like Rails or Django, though it can be used to make such
things)
 A programming language (it uses JavaScript but node isn't its own language)
Instead, node is somewhere in the middle. It is:
 Designed to be simple and therefore relatively easy to understand and use

 Useful for I/O based programs that need to be fast and/or handle lots of
connections
At a lower level, node can be described as a tool for writing two major types of
programs:
 Network programs using the protocols of the web: HTTP, TCP, UDP, DNS and SSL
 Programs that read and write data to the filesystem or local processes/memory
Node does I/O in a way that is asynchronous which lets it handle lots of different things
simultaneously. For example, if you go down to a fast food joint and order a
cheeseburger they will immediately take your order and then make you wait around
until the cheeseburger is ready. In the meantime they can take other orders and start
cooking cheeseburgers for other people. Imagine if you had to wait at the register for
your cheeseburger, blocking all other people in line from ordering while they cooked
your burger! This is called blocking I/O because all I/O (cooking cheeseburgers)
happens one at a time. Node, on the other hand, is non-blocking, which means it can
cook many cheeseburgers at once.
After over 20 years of stateless-web based on the stateless request-response paradigm, we
finally have web applications with real-time, two-way connections.
Node.js shines in real-time web applications employing push technology over
websockets. What is so revolutionary about that? Well, after over 20 years of stateless-
web based on the stateless request-response paradigm, we finally have web
applications with real-time, two-way connections, where both the client and server can
initiate communication, allowing them to exchange data freely. This is in stark contrast
to the typical web response paradigm, where the client always initiates communication.
Additionally, it’s all based on the open web stack (HTML, CSS and JS) running over the
standard port 80.
Why NodeJS?
JavaScript’s rising popularity has brought with it a lot of changes, and the face of web
development today is dramatically different. The things that we can do on the web
nowadays with JavaScript running on the server, as well as in the browser, were hard to

imagine just several years ago, or were encapsulated within sandboxed environments
like Flash or Java Applets.
As Wikipedia states ―Node.js is a packaged compilation of Google’s V8 JavaScript
engine, the libuv platform abstraction layer, and a core library, which is itself primarily
written in JavaScript.‖ Beyond that, it’s worth noting that Ryan Dahl, the creator of
Node.js, was aiming to create real-time websites with push capability, ―inspired by
applications like Gmail‖. In Node.js, he gave developers a tool for working in the non-
blocking, event-driven I/O paradigm.
After over 20 years of stateless-web based on the stateless request-response paradigm, we
finally have web applications with real-time, two-way connections.
Before digging into Node.js, you might want to read up on the benefits of using
JavaScript across the stack which unifies the language and data format (JSON), allowing
you to optimally reuse developer resources. As this is more a benefit of JavaScript than
Node.js specifically, we won’t discuss it much here. But it’s a key advantage to
incorporating Node in your stack.
In one sentence: Node.js shines in real-time web applications employing push
technology over websockets. What is so revolutionary about that? Well, after over 20
years of stateless-web based on the stateless request-response paradigm, we finally
have web applications with real-time, two-way connections, where both the client and
server can initiate communication, allowing them to exchange data freely. This is in stark
contrast to the typical web response paradigm, where the client always initiates
communication. Additionally, it’s all based on the open web stack (HTML, CSS and JS)
running over the standard port 80.
One might argue that we’ve had this for years in the form of Flash and Java Applets—
but in reality, those were just sandboxed environments using the web as a transport
protocol to be delivered to the client. Plus, they were run in isolation and often operated
over non-standard ports, which may have required extra permissions and such.
Performance and scalability are some of the feature’s that stands out best. Node is fast
too. That’s a pretty important requirement when you’re a start-up trying to make the
next big thing and want to make sure you can scale quickly, coping with an influx of
users as your site grows. Node is also perfect for offering a RESTful API - a web service
which takes a few input parameters and passes a little data back – simple data

manipulation without a huge amount of computation. Node can handle thousands of
these concurrently where PHP would just collapse. Performance benefits and scalability
aside, there’s a good chance you already know some JavaScript, so why bother learning
a whole new language like PHP? And then – there’s the excitement of learning
something new and relatively uncharted. You know when something new arrives and
then becomes so ubiquitous that you regret not learning it earlier, forever playing
catchup? Don’t do that this time. Node is going to be big.
History of NodeJS
Node.js was created and first published for Linux use in 2009. Its development and
maintenance was spearheaded by Ryan Dahl and sponsored by Joyent, the firm where
Dahl worked. Dahl was inspired to create Node.js after seeing a file upload progress bar
on Flickr. The browser did not know how much of the file had been uploaded and had
to query the Web server. Dahl desired an easier way. It heralded international attention
after its debut at the inaugural JSConf EU conference. Dahl's original goal was to create
the ability to make web sites with push capabilities as seen in web applications like
Gmail. After trying solutions in several other programming languages he chose
JavaScript because of the lack of an existing I/O API. This allowed him to define a
convention of non-blocking, event-driven I/O.
Node.js is a platform built around Google Chrome V8 Javascript engine, to create
lightweight, fast, scalable, event-driven and non-blocking I/O applications. So let’s begin
talking about Node.js origins, the V8 javascript engine. V8 is an opensource project by
Google and it is in the very core of Google Chrome browser. Its first public release was
on September 2, 2008; same date Chrome’s first release was announced. It was a big
step forward in browsers’ performance, and it pushed browsers’ technology to a new
whole level. It’s written in C++ and its biggest revolution was that it precompiled the
Javascript source code to machine code instead of just interpret it and then applied a JIT
process again in runtime to improve dynamic code execution. Then, around 2009, Ryan
Dahl was trying to solve a tough problem in that days: making the browser know how
much time of an upload process was left. Inspired by Ruby’s Mongrel webserver and by
the recent release of Chrome and V8, he decided to give Javascript a chance, creating
the seeds that would transform in short time into Node.js.

Historically, Javascript browser environments are limited to just one execution process /
thread, making impossible to update DOM and execute some business logic
simultaneously, and this also applied to V8, so, why someone would be interested in
such limited and poor performance platform to run in a server environment?
Well, truth is that maybe Javascript is not the most calculation efficient language
available, but its event-driven non-blocking design, makes Node.js one of the
lightweight platforms (runs really well in a RaspberryPI) and more performant web
platforms, competing directly with the old JEE Java Platform, PHP and Ruby.
How Does It Work?
The main idea of Node.js: use non-blocking, event-driven I/O to remain lightweight and
efficient in the face of data-intensive real-time applications that run across distributed
devices.
What it really means is that Node.js is not a silver-bullet new platform that will dominate
the web development world. Instead, it’s a platform that fills a particular need. And
understanding this is absolutely essential. You definitely don’t want to use Node.js for
CPU-intensive operations; in fact, using it for heavy computation will annul nearly all of
its advantages. Where Node really shines is in building fast, scalable network
applications, as it’s capable of handling a huge number of simultaneous connections
with high throughput, which equates to high scalability.
How it works under-the-hood is pretty interesting. Compared to traditional web-serving
techniques where each connection (request) spawns a new thread, taking up system
RAM and eventually maxing-out at the amount of RAM available, Node.js operates on a
single-thread, using non-blocking I/O calls, allowing it to support tens of thousands of
concurrent connections (held in the event loop).

A quick calculation: assuming that each thread potentially has an accompanying 2 MB of
memory with it, running on a system with 8 GB of RAM puts us at a theoretical

maximum of 4000 concurrent connections, plus the cost of context-switching between
threads. That’s the scenario you typically deal with in traditional web-serving techniques.
By avoiding all this, Node.js achieves scalability levels of over 1M concurrent
connections. There is, of course, the question of sharing a single thread between all
clients’ requests, and it is a potential pitfall of writing Node.js applications. Firstly, heavy
computation could choke up Node’s single thread and cause problems for all clients
(more on this later) as incoming requests would be blocked until said computation was
completed. Secondly, developers need to be really careful not to allow an exception
bubbling up to the core (topmost) Node.js event loop, which will cause the Node.js
instance to terminate (effectively crashing the program).
The technique used to avoid exceptions bubbling up to the surface is passing errors
back to the caller as callback parameters (instead of throwing them, like in other
environments). Even if some unhandled exception manages to bubble up, there are
multiple paradigms and tools available to monitor the Node process and perform the
necessary recovery of a crashed instance (although you won’t be able to recover users’
sessions), the most common being the Forever module, or a different approach with
external system tools upstart and monit.
NPM: The Node Package Manager
When discussing Node.js, one thing that definitely should not be omitted is built-in
support for package management using the NPM tool that comes by default with every
Node.js installation. The idea of NPM modules is quite similar to that of Ruby Gems: a
set of publicly available, reusable components, available through easy installation via an
online repository, with version and dependency management.
A full list of packaged modules can be found on the NPM website https://npmjs.org/, or
accessed using the NPM CLI tool that automatically gets installed with Node.js. The
module ecosystem is open to all, and anyone can publish their own module that will be
listed in the NPM repository.
Some of the most popular NPM modules today are:

 express - Express.js, a Sinatra-inspired web development framework for Node.js,
and the de-facto standard for the majority of Node.js applications out there
today.
 connect - Connect is an extensible HTTP server framework for Node.js, providing
a collection of high performance ―plugins‖ known as middleware; serves as a base
foundation for Express.
 socket.io and sockjs - Server-side component of the two most common
websockets components out there today.
 Jade - One of the popular templating engines, inspired by HAML, a default in
Express.js.
 mongo and mongojs - MongoDB wrappers to provide the API for MongoDB
object databases in Node.js.
 redis - Redis client library.
 coffee-script - CoffeeScript compiler that allows developers to write their
Node.js programs using Coffee.
 underscore (lodash, lazy) - The most popular utility library in JavaScript,
packaged to be used with Node.js, as well as its two counterparts, which
promise better performance by taking a slightly different implementation
approach.
 forever - Probably the most common utility for ensuring that a given node script
runs continuously. Keeps your Node.js process up in production in the face of any
unexpected failures.
The list goes on. There are tons of really useful packages out there, available to all (no
offense to those that I’ve omitted here).
Where Node.js Can Be Used
SERVER-SIDE WEB APPLICATIONS

Node.js with Express.js can also be used to create classic web applications on the server-
side. However, while possible, this request-response paradigm in which Node.js would
be carrying around rendered HTML is not the most typical use-case. There are
arguments to be made for and against this approach. Here are some facts to consider:
Pros:
If your application doesn’t have any CPU intensive computation, you can build it in
Javascript top-to-bottom, even down to the database level if you use JSON storage
Object DB like MongoDB. This eases development (including hiring) significantly.
Crawlers receive a fully-rendered HTML response, which is far more SEO-friendly than,
say, a Single Page Application or a websockets app run on top of Node.js.
Cons:
Any CPU intensive computation will block Node.js responsiveness, so a threaded
platform is a better approach. Alternatively, you could try scaling out the computation.
Using Node.js with a relational database is still quite a pain (see below for more detail).
Do yourself a favour and pick up any other environment like Rails, Django, or ASP.Net
MVC if you’re trying to perform relational operations.
Where Node.js Shouldn’t Be Used
SERVER-SIDE WEB APPLICATION W/ A RELATIONAL DB BEHIND
Comparing Node.js with Express.js against Ruby on Rails, for example, there is a clean
decision in favour of the latter when it comes to relational data access.
Relational DB tools for Node.js are still in their early stages; they’re rather immature and
not as pleasant to work with. On the other hand, Rails automagically provides data
access setup right out of the box together with DB schema migrations support tools and
other Gems (pun intended). Rails and its peer frameworks have mature and proven
Active Record or Data Mapper data access layer implementations, which you’ll sorely
miss if you try to replicate them in pure JavaScript.

HEAVY SERVER-SIDE COMPUTATION/PROCESSING
When it comes to heavy computation, Node.js is not the best platform around. No, you
definitely don’t want to build a Fibonacci computation server in Node.js. In general, any
CPU intensive operation annuls all the throughput benefits Node offers with its event-
driven, non-blocking I/O model because any incoming requests will be blocked while
the thread is occupied with your number-crunching.
As stated previously, Node.js is single-threaded and uses only a single CPU core. When
it comes to adding concurrency on a multi-core server, there is some work being done
by the Node core team in the form of a cluster module [ref:
http://nodejs.org/api/cluster.html]. You can also run several Node.js server instances
pretty easily behind a reverse proxy via nginx.
With clustering, you should still offload all heavy computation to background processes
written in a more appropriate environment for that, and having them communicate via a
message queue server like RabbitMQ.
Even though your background processing might be run on the same server initially, such
an approach has the potential for very high scalability. Those background processing
services could be easily distributed out to separate worker servers without the need to
configure the loads of front-facing web servers.
Of course, you’d use the same approach on other platforms too, but with Node.js you
get that high reqs/sec throughput we’ve talked about, as each request is a small task
handled very quickly and efficiently.
Fundamentals of NodeJS
Modules
Java or Python use the import function to load other libraries, while PHP and Ruby use
require. Node implements the CommonJS interface for modules. In Node you can also
load other dependencies using the require keyword.
For example, we can require some native modules:
var dns = require('dns');

We can also require relative files:
var myFile = require('./myFile'); // loads myFile.js
To install modules from npm, either search for them on the website or on Github. The
syntax for installing an npm module locally is pretty straightforward:
$ npm install express
You can require module install from npm as you would do with the native ones, no need
to specify the absolute or relative path:
var express = require('express');
The nice thing about requiring Node modules is that they aren't automatically injected
into the global scope, but instead you just assigned them to a variable of your choice.
That means that you don't have to care about two or more modules that have functions
with the same name.
When creating your own modules, all you have to do is take care when exporting
something (wheather it's a function, an object, a number or so on). The first approach
would be to export a single object:
var person = { name: 'John', age: 20 };
module.exports = person;
The second approach requires adding properties to the exports object:
exports.name = 'John';
exports.age = 20;
A thing to note about modules is that they don't share scope, so if you want to share a
variable between different modules, you must include it into a separate module that is
then required by the other modules. Another interesting thing you should remember is
that modules are only loaded once, and after that they are cached by Node.
Unlike the browser, Node does not have a window global object, but instead has two
others: globals and process. However, you should seriously avoid adding properties on
the two.

Callbacks
In asynchronous programming we do not return values when our functions are done,
but instead we use the continuation-passing style (CPS).
With this style, an asynchronous function invokes a callback (a function usually passed
as the last argument) to continue the program once the it has finished.
Below is an example that looks up IPv4 addresses for a domain:
var dns = require('dns');
dns.resolve4('www.google.com', function (err, addresses) {
if (err) throw err;
console.log('addresses: ' + JSON.stringify(addresses));
});
We have passed a callback (the inline anonymous function) as the second argument to
the dns.resolve4 asynchronous function. Once the async function has the response
ready for us it will invoke the callback, thus continuing the program execution. This is
how we make use of CPS.
Events
The standard callback pattern works well for the use cases where we want to be notified
when the async function finishes. However, there are situations that require being
notified of different events that do not occur at the same time.
Let us look at an example involving an IRC client:
var irc = require('irc');
var client = new irc.Client('irc.freenode.net', 'myIrcBot', { channels: ['#s
ample-channel'] });
client.on('error', function(message) { console.error('error: ', message);
});
client.on('connect', function() {
console.log('connected to the irc server');
});
client.on('message', function (from, to, message) {

console.log(from + ' => ' + to + ': ' + message);
});
client.on('pm', function (from, message) {
console.log(from + ' => ME: ' + message);
});
We are listening to different types of events in the above example:
 The connect event is emitted when the client has successfully connected to the
IRC server.
 The error event is triggered in case an error occurs.
 The message and pm events are emitted for incoming messages.
The events mentioned above make this situation ideal for using
the EventEmitter pattern.
The EventEmitter pattern allows implementors to emit an event to which the consumers
can subscribe if they are interested. This pattern may be familiar to you from the
browser, where it is used for attaching DOM event handlers.
Node has an EventEmitter class in core which we can use to make our own EventEmitter
objects. Let's create a MemoryWatcher class that inherits from EventEmitter and emits
two types of events:
 A data event at a regular interval, representing the memory usage in bytes
 An error event, in case the memory exceeds a certain limit imposed
The MemoryWatcher class will look like the following:
var EventEmitter = require('events').EventEmitter;
var util = require('util');
function MemoryWatcher(opts) {
if (!(this instanceof MemoryWatcher)) { return new MemoryWatcher();
}
opts = opts || { frequency: 30000 // 30 seconds };
EventEmitter.call(this);
var that = this; setInterval(function() {

var password = new Buffer(process.env.PASS || 'password');
var encryptStream = crypto.createCipher('aes-256-cbc', password);
var gzip = zlib.createGzip();
var readStream = fs.createReadStream(**filename);
// current file
var writeStream = fs.createWriteStream(**dirname + '/out.gz');
// reads current file
.pipe(encryptStream)
// encrypts
.pipe(gzip)
// compresses
.pipe(writeStream)
// writes to out file
.on('finish', function () {
// all done console.log('done');
});
Here we take a readable stream, pipe it into an encryption stream, then pipe that into a
gzip compression stream and finally pipe it into a write stream (writing the content to
disk). The encryption and compression streams are transform streams, which represent
duplex streams where the output is in some way computed from the input.
After running that example we should see a file called out.gz.
Error Handling
Error handling is one of the most important topics in Node. If you ignore errors or deal
with them improperly, your entire application might crash or be left in an inconsistent
state.
Threading
Node.js operates on a single thread, using non-blocking I/O calls, allowing it to support
tens of thousands of concurrent connections, without worrying about the cost of

context-switching between threads. The design of sharing a single-thread between all
the requests means it can be used to build highly concurrent applications. The design
goal of a Node.js application is that any function performing I/O must use a callback. A
downside of this approach is that Node.js doesn't allow scaling with the number of CPU
cores of the machine it is running on.
V8
V8 is the JavaScript execution engine built for Google Chrome, open-sourced by Google
in 2008. Written in C++, V8 compiles JavaScript source code just-in-time to machine
code instead of interpreting it in real time. Node.js contains libuv to handle
asynchronous events. V8 provides the run-time for JavaScript. Libuv is an abstraction
layer for network and file system functionality on both Windows and POSIX-based
systems like Linux, Mac OS X and UNIX. The core functionality of Node.js resides in a
JavaScript library. The Node.js bindings, written in C++, connect these technologies to
each other and to the operating system.
Package management
Npm is the pre-installed package manager for the Node.js server platform. It is used to
install Node.js programs from the npm registry. By organizing the installation and
management of third-party Node.js programs, it helps developers build faster. npm is
not to be confused with the commonJS require() statement. It is not used to load code:
instead, it is used to install code and manage code dependencies from the command
line. The packages found in the npm registry can range from simple helper libraries like
underscore.js to task runners like Grunt.
Unified API
Node.js combined with a browser, a document DB (such as MongoDB or CouchDB) and
JSON offers a unified JavaScript development stack. With the increased attention to
client-side frameworks and the adaptation of what were essentially server-side
development patterns like MVC, MVP, MVVM, etc., Node.js allows the reuse of the same
model and service interface between client-side and server-side.
Event loop
Node.js registers itself with the operating system so that it is notified when a connection
is made. When a connection is made, the operating system will issue a callback. Within

the Node.js runtime, each connection is a small heap allocation. Traditionally, relatively
heavyweight OS processes or threads handled each connection. Node.js, however, uses
an event loop, instead of processes or threads, to scale to millions of connections
happening at the same time [citation needed]. In contrast to other event-driven servers,
Node.js' event loop does not need to be called explicitly. Instead callbacks are defined,
and the server automatically enters the event loop at the end of the callback definition.
Node.js exits the event loop when there are no further callbacks to be performed.
Installing NodeJS
Installing on Linux
You can install a pre-built version of node.js via downloads page using a .tar.gz.
Installing on Mac
You can install a pre-built version of node.js via downloads page using a .pkg or a .tar.gz.
Installing on Windows
You can install a pre-built version of node.js via downloads page using an .exe or a.msi.
Installing on SunOS
You can install a pre-built version of node.js via downloads page using a .tar.gz.
Let’s Say Hello to NodeJS
Hello Console
This example is about as plain as it can get. It prints the words "Hello World" to the
terminal.
hello-console.js
// Call the console.log function.
console.log("Hello World");
You can run this by putting it in a file called "hello-console.js" and running it with

node hello-console.js
Hello HTTP
A Simple HTTP server that responds to every request with the plain text message "Hello
World"
hello-http.js
// Load the http module to create an http server.
var http = require('http');
// Configure our HTTP server to respond with Hello World to all requests.
var server = http.createServer(function (request, response) {
response.writeHead(200, {"Content-Type": "text/plain"});
response.end("Hello Worldn");
});
// Listen on port 8000, IP defaults to 127.0.0.1
server.listen(8000);
// Put a friendly message on the terminal
console.log("Server running at http://127.0.0.1:8000/");
Hello TCP
Node also makes an excellent TCP server, and here is an example that responds to all
TCP connections with the message "Hello World" and then closes the connection.
hello-tcp.js
// Load the net module to create a tcp server.
var net = require('net');
// Creates a new TCP server. The handler argument is automatically set as a listener
for the 'connection' event
var server = net.createServer(function (socket) {
// Every time someone connects, tell them hello and then close the connection.

console.log("Connection from " + socket.remoteAddress);
socket.end("Hello Worldn");
});
// Fire up the server bound to port 7000 on localhost
server.listen(7000, "localhost");
// Put a friendly message on the terminal
console.log("TCP server listening on port 7000 at localhost.");
Hello Router
This example shows an HTTP server that responds with "Hello World" to all requests to
"/" and responds with a 404 error to everything else.
hello-router.js
// Load the node-router library by creationix
var server = require('node-router').getServer();
// Configure our HTTP server to respond with Hello World the root request
server.get("/", function (request, response) {
response.simpleText(200, "Hello World!");
});
// Listen on port 8080 on localhost
server.listen(8000, "localhost");
In order to test this, install the node-router library. There are two ways to do this. You
can either install it into a path that node recognizes or put the node-router.js file in your
application and reference it locally.
Making our response more interesting
Hello world is pretty boring so let's do something a little more entertaining. We can
create a user counter very easily in Node.js and we don't even need to use a database
like we might do in PHP.

Create a new JavaScript file called, 'counter.js' and type the following:
var http = require('http');
var userCount = 0;
http.createServer(function (request, response) {
console.log('New connection');
userCount++;
response.writeHead(200, {'Content-Type': 'text/plain'});
response.write('Hello!n');
response.write('We have had '+userCount+' visits!n');
response.end();
}).listen(8080);
console.log('Server started');
Now let's run it with the command,
node counter.js
When you navigate your browser to 'http://localhost:8080' you should now get a view
counter.
Note: You might see the counter going up by two for each request; this is because your
browser is requesting the favicon from the server (http://localhost:8080/favicon.ico).
You should also see that Node.js is logging each request it receives to the console.
The main thing we're doing here is setting a 'userCount' variable and incrementing on
each request. We're then writing the 'userCount' in the response text.

NODE.JS AND EXPRESS - CREATING
A REST API
Once you learn a little bit of Node.js you find that modules make life much easier. One
of the most popular and useful is Express. It carries a lot of similarities to the Ruby
framework, Sinatra. This makes it a great tool for building REST APIs. This example will
teach how to use Express and build a basic REST API.
Express js is a minimal and flexible node.js web application framework, providing a robust
set of features for building single and multi-page, and hybrid web applications,Express
provides a thin layer of features fundamental to any web application, without obscuring
features that you know and love in node.js, expressjs.com
Project Skeleton using ExpressJS
Every nodeJS project must have a package.json file. Creation of package.json is too cool
with npm.
The first method:
npm init
This will create package.json inside our project directory. Add the details of the
application in that package.json file like following.
{
"name": "first-express-app",
"description": "a fine piece of express art",

"version": "0.0.1",
"dependencies": {
"express": "3.x"
}
}
Once the package.json file is updated you'll need to run the npm installation.
npm install
The second method:
This becomes useful if you've already got a package.json file. You can use a lesser
known option on npm install to automatically update your package.json - the save
option.
npm install express –save
The project directory will now have a node_modules folder and inside it will be an
express folder. Your application is now setup to start building.
First Application
To get rolling let's build a very simple application to get familiar with the syntax of
Express. This means creating a main file, in this case app.js.
The start of the file needs to include the express module using a require statement.
Once this is included you can invoke it as a function which will return an Express server
instance. This application instance will allow you to configure and add routes.
var app = express();
The next step is to add a route. This is a url that can be retrieved in the application. You
build a route by calling app.METHOD where METHOD is an acceptable HTTP method
like "get". The route is passed the url that will be accessed, such as '/' or the site root.
The second parameter to a route is a callback to call when the url is retrieved.

The route callback takes in a req (request) and res (response) which are modified
versions of the objects passed to the core request event. Express adds functionality to
both objects but for this exercise we'll concentrate on the response object.
With the response object the following code will do two things. It will set the content
type header (Content-Type) using the res.type function. A text response will be sent
back using res.send which will automatically set the content length header (Content-
Length).
app.get('/', function(req, res) {
res.type('text/plain');
res.send('i am a beautiful butterfly');
});
The final thing we need to do in this simple example is have the app listen for incoming
requests. This is done using the aptly named listen function. This function will take any
valid parameters that you can pass in to the regular http server. In order to make it easy
to change the port and support deploying to platforms like Modulus the port will be set
to process.env.PORT or 4730 (a random port I chose). The process.env.PORT means if
the PORT environment variable is passed in it will use it. This wraps up the basic app.
first.js
res.type('text/plain'); // set content-type
res.send('i am a beautiful butterfly'); // send text response
});

app.listen(process.env.PORT || 4730);
You can test this by running the file using:
node app.js
Then you may go to http://localhost:4730 in your browser and if all went well you'll see
'i am a beautiful butterfly'.
Basic REST API
Now that we have a very basic express application we can dive into a more complex
application.
REST APIs are made up of four method types, GET, PUT, POST, and DELETE and with
Express we can easily do them all. For the rest of this article we're going to build a
simple API that allows you to get and save quotes.
To get started we'll start with a basic Express application that just has an array of quotes.
Each quote is an object with the author and text.
quote.js
var quotes = [
{ author : 'Audrey Hepburn', text : "Nothing is impossible, the word itself
says 'I'm possible'!"},
{ author : 'Walt Disney', text : "You may not realize it when it happens, b
ut a kick in the teeth may be the best thing in the world for you"},
{ author : 'Unknown', text : "Even the greatest was once a beginner. Don't
be afraid to take that first step."},
{ author : 'Neale Donald Walsch', text : "You are afraid to die, and you're
afraid to live. What a way to exist."}
];
app.listen(process.env.PORT || 3412);

Now you'll notice that this doesn't really do anything. So let's add a route to return all of
the quotes in our array. Now, this is going to be really easy. We're going to take
advantage of a helper function on the response object, to send a json object.
res.json(quotes);
});
Let's add the ability to retrieve a random quote. This, again, shouldn't be hard addition.
We'll add a new route '/quote/random'; then we'll calculate a random index, grab the
quote, and return it.
app.get('/quote/random', function(req, res) {
var id = Math.floor(Math.random() * quotes.length);
var q = quotes[id];
res.json(q);
});
The next thing we'll add in there is the ability to grab a single quote. The way you do
this is by adding a ": param" to the route, so the route will look like "/quote/:id" and the
id will be available using req.params.
app.get('/quote/:id', function(req, res) {
if(quotes.length <= req.params.id || req.params.id < 0) {
res.statusCode = 404;
return res.send('Error 404: No quote found');
}
var q = quotes[req.params.id];
res.json(q);
});
In the above the code you can see that we first check to make sure that the id requested
is in the range of quotes we have. If no then we return a 404 error, meaning that the

quote wasn't found. In theory we'd probably return a nice error object in this case. If the
request is good then we return the result found based on the id.
One item to note is that since we have "/quote/random" and "/quote/:id" we have to
put the random route first. Why you ask? Well, this is because routes are checked in
order and if it was the other way around "random" would be treated like an id.
So, I'm guessing you'll want to be able to dynamically add quotes to the array. This will
be done using a POST method to the API, this is done using app.post. The POST should
have a JSON object for the new quote.
In order to get the body from a POST in express we have to add a piece of middleware
to our application. This is done using bodyParser middleware. Body parser will pretty
much do what it sounds like - parse the body of the request and then it sets the body
property on the request object.
app.use(express.bodyParser());
The above should be added to the top of the application before we add any routes.
app.post('/quote', function(req, res) {
if(!req.body.hasOwnProperty('author') ||
!req.body.hasOwnProperty('text')) {
return res.send('Error 400: Post syntax incorrect.');
}
var newQuote = {
author : req.body.author,
text : req.body.text
};
quotes.push(newQuote);

res.json(true);
});
At the beginning of our route function we check to make sure the body has both the
"author" and "text" properties. If they don't exist then we return an error. If the request
is fine then we add it to our quotes and push back a true response.
The last thing thing we'll add is the ability to delete a response. This will be achieved
using the DELETE method.
app.delete('/quote/:id', function(req, res) {
if(quotes.length <= req.params.id) {
return res.send('Error 404: No quote found');
}
quotes.splice(req.params.id, 1);
res.json(true);
});
The above function starts by checking the length of our quotes to make sure we don't
try to delete something that isn't there. If no error we splice the array to remove the
quote and return true to the client.
Express application generator
Use the application generator tool, express, to quickly create a application skeleton.
Install it with the following command
$ npm install express-generator –g
Display the command options with the -h option:
$ express -h

Usage: express [options] [dir]
Options:
-h, --help output usage information
-V, --version output the version number
-e, --ejs add ejs engine support (defaults to jade)
--hbs add handlebars engine support
-H, --hogan add hogan.js engine support
-c, --css <engine> add stylesheet <engine> support (less|stylus|compass)
(defaults to plain css)
-f, --force force on non-empty directory
Note: If you are getting some error like this 'express' is not recognized as an internal or
external command, operable program or batch file, add
c:Users<youruser>AppDataRoamingnpm to your path
For example, the following creates an Express app named myapp in the current working
directory.
$ express myapp
create : myapp
create : myapp/package.json
create : myapp/app.js
create : myapp/public
create : myapp/public/javascripts
create : myapp/public/images
create : myapp/routes
create : myapp/routes/index.js

create : myapp/routes/users.js
create : myapp/public/stylesheets
create : myapp/public/stylesheets/style.css
create : myapp/views
create : myapp/views/index.jade
create : myapp/views/layout.jade
create : myapp/views/error.jade
create : myapp/bin
create : myapp/bin/www
install dependencies:
$ cd myapp && npm install
run the app:
$ DEBUG=myapp ./bin/www
On Windows, use the following command to run the app.
set DEBUG=myapp & node .binwww
The generated app directory structure looks like the following.
.
├── app.js
├── bin
│ └── www
├── package.json
├── public
│ ├── images
│ ├── javascripts
│ └── stylesheets

│ └── style.css
├── routes
│ ├── index.js
│ └── users.js
└── views
├── error.jade
├── index.jade
└── layout.jade
7 directories, 9 files
Taking Baby Steps with Node.js –
Debugging with node-inspector
Writing unit tests for your code drastically reduces the amount of debugging. This is the
case for practically any programming language that you work in. But when issues hit the
app, having a debugger with some decent features at your disposal is a must. However
Node.js doesn’t come with a debugger out of the box. Thankfully there are a couple of
debuggers out there like ndb, node-debug and node-inspector.
Installing node-inspector is actually pretty easy when you have npm installed. Just issue
the following command:
npm install node-inspector
Now we can startup node-inspector
node-inspector &
Which shows the following output if all goes well:
visit http://127.0.0.1:8080 to start debugging

Now that we have node-inspector running, we can start debugging our node.js
application in another console:
node --debug server.js
Which outputs the port on which the debugger is listening.
debugger listening on port 5858
Now you can open Chrome and point it to the following URL:
http://127.0.0.1:8080/
If all goes well, then we’ll get to see some JavaScript source code:
Note that you’ll have to use Chrome or another WebKit based browser for opening
node-inspector.
You can then select the JavaScript source file that contains the code you wish to debug
and add breakpoints like you would normally do in an IDE like Visual Studio. Now we
can start using our application until we hit a breakpoint.

On the right of the page we can add watch expressions, look at the call stack and the
current values of the scope variables. In the code window we have the usual suspects
like ―Step over‖, ―Step into next function‖ and ―Step out of current function‖. We can
even do live editing and all of this right in the browser! Tooltips also work as expected.

Another nice feature is the console window that can be shown/hidden below or taking
over the entire window by clicking the menu button at the top of the page.

Using node-inspector while developing Node.js applications can really save you a lot of
grief.
Summarizing NodeJS
Node is a wrapper around the high-performance V8 JavaScript runtime from the Google
Chrome browser. Node tunes V8 to work better in contexts other than the browser,
mostly by providing additional APIs that are optimized for specific use cases. For
example, in a server context, manipulation of binary data is often necessary. This is
poorly supported by the JavaScript language and, as a result, V8. Node’s Buffer class
provides easy manipulation of binary data. Thus, Node doesn’t just provide direct access
to the V8 JavaScript runtime. It also makes JavaScript more useful for the contexts in
which people use Node. V8 itself uses some of the newest techniques in compiler
technology. This often allows code written in a high-level language such as JavaScript to
perform similarly to code written in a lower-level language, such as C, with a fraction of
the development cost. This focus on performance is a key aspect of Node. JavaScript is
an event-driven language, and Node uses this to its advantage to produce highly
scalable servers. Using architecture called an event loop, Node makes programming
highly scalable servers both easy and safe. There are various strategies that are used to
make servers performant. Node has chosen an architecture that performs very well but
also reduces the complexity for the application developer. This is an extremely
important feature. Programming concurrency is hard and fraught with danger. Node
sidesteps this challenge while still offering impressive performance. To support the
event-loop approach, Node supplies a set of ―nonblocking‖ libraries. In essence, these
are interfaces to things such as the filesystem or databases, which operate in an event-
driven way. When you make a request to the filesystem, rather than requiring Node to
wait for the hard drive to spin up and retrieve the file, the nonblocking interface simply
notifies Node when it has access, in the same way that web browsers notify your code
about an onclick event. This model simplifies access to slow resources in a scalable way
that is intuitive to JavaScript programmers and easy to learn for everyone else.

NodeJS

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