Mastering Node.js: Build Robust and Scalable Real-Time Server-Side Web Applications Efficiently

by Sandro Pasquali, Kevin Faaborg

Expert techniques for building fast servers and scalable, real-time network applications with minimal effort; rewritten for Node.js 8 and Node.js 9

Key Features Packed with practical examples and explanations, Mastering Node.js contains everything you need to take your applications to the next level. Unleash the full potential of Node.js 9 to build real-time and scalable applications. Gain in-depth knowledge of asynchronous programming, event loops, and parallel data processing. Explore Node's innovative event-non-blocking design, and build professional applications with the help of detailed examples. Book Description

Node.js, a modern development environment that enables developers to write server- and client-side code with JavaScript, thus becoming a popular choice among developers.

This book covers the features of Node that are especially helpful to developers creating highly concurrent real-time applications. It takes you on a tour of Node's innovative event non-blocking design, showing you how to build professional applications. This edition has been updated to cover the latest features of Node 9 and ES6. All code examples and demo applications have been completely rewritten using the latest techniques, introducing Promises, functional programming, async/await, and other cutting-edge patterns for writing JavaScript code. Learn how to use microservices to simplify the design and composition of distributed systems. From building serverless cloud functions to native C++ plugins, from chatbots to massively scalable SMS-driven applications, you'll be prepared for building the next generation of distributed software.

By the end of this book, you'll be building better Node applications more quickly, with less code and more power, and know how to run them at scale in production environments.

What you will learn Build an Electron desktop app using Node that manages a filesystem Explore Streams and understand how they apply to building networked services Develop and deploy an SMS-driven customer service application Use WebSockets for rapid bi-directional communication Construct serverless applications with Amazon Lambda Test and debug with headless browsers, CPU profiling, Mocha, Sinon, and more Scale applications vertically and horizontally across multiple cores and web services Who This Book Is For

This book is targeted at JavaScript developers who want to take an in-depth look at the latest Node.js framework to create faster, scalable, real-time backend applications. Basic JavaScript programming knowledge—and also some previous Node.js development experience—are mandatory to get the best out of this book

Table of Contents Understanding the Node Environment Understanding Asynchronous Event-Driven Programming Streaming Data across Nodes and Clients Using Node to Access the File System Managing many simultaneous client connections Creating Realtime Applications Utilizing Multiple Processes Scaling your Application Deploying Microservices Testing your Application Appendix A : Organizing Your Work into Modules Appendix B : Creating your own C++ Add-ons

Genres: Technology, Technical, Programming

498 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2013

Reviews

[Arminas Katilius · Rating 2 out of 5]

The book has lot's of content, and starts just fine. It was interesting to read about main goals of Node as a platform and why it was built the way it was. But towards the end it starts to skim through too much topics. Also transition between them seems random at times. I think it could have been much better book if it were shorter and more concice.

[Andrea · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very good book to understand nodejs and its filosophy. Recommended

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I am reading this in 2023, almost a decade since it was written, and the Node ecosystem has evolved quite a bit over time, yet the fundamentals remain the same.

I came in hoping to get a sense of how NodeJS accomplishes a single-threaded execution context while leveraging on the multi-threaded nature of the operating system, and how the event loop worked. I'm quite pleased to say I learned a lot about this by the time I was done, and more. I'd never had a reason to write Electron before now (still don't — haha!) but I learned how to write an electron app, explored some rather peculiar HTTP headers and some of the common design patterns they employ (I found ETags — Entity Tags — to be a very clever way to prevent unnecessary resource fetching if resources are already cached browser-side).

It probably helps to mention that my server fundamentals were shaky — hence the decision to read this — so if some of the things I am impressed by seem rather commonplace, well you know.

I recommend it for anyone who's ever built a NodeJS server and wondered 'now what?'

[Ossy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Quite steep, kind of advanced stuffs, but once you get to understand it you enjoy it.