Preface

While there have been quite a few attempts to get JavaScript working as a server-side language, Node.js (frequently just called Node) has been the first environment that's gained any traction. It's now used by companies such as Netflix, Uber and Paypal to power their web apps. Node allows for blazingly fast performance; thanks to its event loop model, common tasks like network connection and database I/O can be executed very quickly indeed.

In this book, we'll take a look at a selection of the related tools and skills that will make you a much more productive Node developer.

Who Should Read This Book?

This book is for anyone who wants to start learning server-side development with Node.js. Familiarity with JavaScript is assumed, but we don't assume any previous back-end development experience.

Conventions Used

Code Samples

Code in this book is displayed using a fixed-width font, like so:

<h1>A Perfect Summer's Day</h1>
<p>It was a lovely day for a walk in the park.
The birds were singing and the kids were all back at school.</p>
			

Where existing code is required for context, rather than repeat all of it, ⋮ will be displayed:

function animate() {
    ⋮
new_variable = "Hello";
}

Some lines of code should be entered on one line, but we’ve had to wrap them because of page constraints. An ➥ indicates a line break that exists for formatting purposes only, and should be ignored:

URL.open("http://www.sitepoint.com/responsive-web-
➥design-real-user-testing/?responsive1");

You’ll notice that we’ve used certain layout styles throughout this book to signify different types of information. Look out for the following items.

Tips, Notes, and Warnings

Supplementary Materials

• https://www.sitepoint.com/community/ are SitePoint’s forums, for help on any tricky problems.
• [email protected] is our email address, should you need to contact us to report a problem, or for any other reason.