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#Backend Node

Outcome

You'll be able to backend dev.

Advice

You already know it.

You already know javascript. Now it's time to backend it up.

Node is a javascript environment which runs outside the browser, instead it runs on the command line. The technologies you already know are linked heavily to node:

Came from Node in the first place:

  • npm
  • requiring modules

Work fine with Node:

  • Babel (and hence es6 / es7)
  • eslint
  • Any npm package

Don't work / can't be used with Node:

  • Webpack (webpack, kind of simulates node (deals with requiring things))

Extra capabilities

There are some things you can do in node that you can't do inside a browser:

  • Access things your operating system knows about
    • local filesystem
    • running processes
    • launch a program
    • anything you can do on a command line
  • Communicate over protocols other than http / websockets / webRTC (which are the only things you can do in a browser)
    • Run a http backend

There are lots of npm packages to help you with all of this stuff. We'll run through a few now.

Learning materials

Tasks

  • Get our node-seed up and running.
  • Create a new directory on the filesystem
  • Create a file called hello.txt which contains the text: 'hello'
  • Make a HTTP get service which returns "hello" using Express
  • Make a HTTP get service which returns the JSON {"hello": "<name>"} and takes a param name="john".
  • Make a HTTP post service which takes JSON {"hello": "john"} and returns that same json.
  • Redo the lodash task in node