Chapter 1. Getting started

 

This chapter covers

  • Why Node?
  • Node’s main features
  • Building a Node application

Node has quickly become established as a viable and indeed efficient web development platform. Before Node, not only was JavaScript on the server a novelty, but non-blocking I/O was something that required special libraries for other scripting languages. With Node, this has all changed.

The combination of non-blocking I/O and JavaScript is immensely powerful: we can handle reading and writing files, network sockets, and more, all asynchronously in the same process, with the natural and expressive features of JavaScript callbacks.

This book is geared toward intermediate Node developers, so this chapter is a quick refresher. If you want a thorough treatment of Node’s basics, then see our companion book, Node.js in Action (by Mike Cantelon, Marc Harter, TJ Holowaychuk, and Nathan Rajlich; Manning Publications, 2013).

In this chapter we’ll introduce Node, what it is, how it works, and why it’s something you can’t live without. In chapter 2 you’ll get to try out some techniques by looking at Node’s globals—the objects and methods available to every Node process.

Preflight check

Node In Practice is a recipe-style book, aimed at intermediate and advanced Node developers. Although this chapter covers some introductory material, later chapters advance quickly. For a beginner’s introduction to Node, see our companion book, Node.js in Action.

1.1. Getting to know Node

1.2. Building a Node application

1.3. Summary