Mastering Web Application Development with Express

by Alexandru Vladutu

If you are a Node.js developer who wants to take your Express skills to the next level and develop high performing, reliable web applications using best practices, this book is ideal for you. The only prerequisite is knowledge of Node.js.

358 pages, ebook

First published January 1, 2014

Reviews

[Pulak Bhattacharyya · Rating 5 out of 5]

Dipawali, the festival of lights, is the perfect occasion to share with you another book review. The book is about Express, “Mastering Web Application Development with Express”. Author, Alexandru has covered various aspects of web application development using Express through well composed eleven chapters.

Let’s go with each of the chapters in detail so that we can conclude that if you are not reading this book, then you will definitely miss valuable points and understanding of Express, a web development framework for Node.js.

Chapter 1: Diving into Express

The following are the positives of this chapter:

It talks about Express features and how it is different from more complex framework like Rails, or Django and or CakePHP

i) Use cases of Express
ii) Who are all using Express?
iii) How to structure an Express application?
iv) Chapter 2: Component Modularity Using Middleware

An important concept while discussing about Express is Middleware and hence this chapter among others deserves all the attention. Author has done justice and the highlights of this section are as follows:

i) Definition of Middleware and its’ functionalities
ii) Code snippet to explain how to configure middleware
ii) A practical example of middleware to have clear understanding of the subject
iv) Why ordering of middleware is important
v) An insight into handling error with middleware

No wonder at end of this chapter, you will have good understanding of what middleware is and how you can use it for your purpose.

For complete review, please visit my blog: http://pulakonline.com/

[Poomalairaj · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a fantastic book for learning web application development using express on node.js by Alexandru Vlăduțu. The book covers express 4.x. This book covers almost all aspects of node.js development like http, validations, templating, testing, API development, best practices and lot more. The book introduces many fantastic node.js modules which can be helpful for a node.js web development. This is one of the best book you can find for learning and mastering express/node.js

I had negative feelings when I started out this book but it turned very positive as I continue to read it. I had tried couple of books on node.js and express. Many of the books are outdated now and they lacked enough example code; Even books with title "Recipes".

You need to have experience in web development to follow this book. If you are an absolute beginner, I would suggest you to research and read more about web development and node.js to follow with this book. This book can also be used as a reference book for node.js development and best practices of development in general.

One of the problems with npm packages is that you never know which one is the best for a particular purpose. You have thousands of modules. As this platform is an evolving one, API's frequently change. Backward compatibility is often broken. You need an up to date book to keep up with this. Even though the title of the books says that it is about express, it explains many aspects of node.js and npm modules.

[Dominik · Rating 4 out of 5]

In the past view years, Javascript on the server side with NodeJs has experienced a strong rise in interest as demonstrated by the number of articles and tutorials and the number of high profile companies using it in production.

This book is not for beginners and is for those willing to go beyond the numerous freely available tutorials on the web. This is for those looking to use NodeJS in production and focuses on ExpressJS the most popular web application 'framework'.

It is a well structured book, covering a number of topics essential in designing a proper web application (application structure, modularity, creating restful APIs, making your code DRY, Error handling, Debugging, Performance, Monitoring, Security etc...). It is illustrated by numerous code examples, a GIThub page containing all the examples and numerous tips and good practices to build complex applications.

2 nice things I really liked in this book:
- all the examples, take the form of developing different practical examples
- if you are used to follow tutorials, it will be a seamless transition

I have begun my journey into javascript and nodejs not a long time ago and this book really helped me bring my understanding of ExpressJs to the next level.

P.S. I am not affiliated with the author of this great book, I was lucky enough to be part of the early reviewers.

[Tony Brown · Rating 3 out of 5]

First of all I was given a digital copy of the book to review.
All in all it's not a bad book, if you are following along with the book, make sure to download the sample files.

For example, in Chapter 2: first example the file in reference is called 'p- whitelist.js'
if you are an experience Express dev than you will have no problems getting the examples to work.
I found the examples to be fun and informative, just the poor editing throughout the book makes it a chore to follow along.

All in all the author gives good advice, it's a pricey book, not worth it in my opinion.