Preface

The principles of asynchronous event-driven programming are perfect for today's Web, where efficient, high-concurrency applications are essential for good user experience and a company's bottom line.

The use of Node for tooling and server-side logic with a browser-based client-side UI leads to a full-stack unilingual experience—everything is JavaScript. This saves developers, architects, project leads, and entire teams the cognitive energy of context-switching between languages, and yields rapid, fluid development cycles.

With a thriving community and success stories from major organizations (such as Groupon, PayPal, and Yahoo), Node.js is relevant to enthusiasts, start-ups, and enterprises alike.

Node Cookbook Second Edition shows you how to transfer your JavaScript skills to server-side programming. With simple examples and supporting code, this book takes you through various server-side scenarios, often saving you time, effort, and trouble by demonstrating best practices and showing you how to avoid security mistakes.

The second edition comes with an additional chapter (Chapter 5, Employing Streams) and has been updated for the latest version of Node along with the most recent versions of the modules and frameworks discussed. In particular, the very latest versions of the popular Express and Socket.IO frameworks have extensive coverage.

Beginning with making your own web server, the practical recipes in this cookbook are designed to smoothly help you progress to make full web applications, command-line applications, and Node modules. Node Cookbook Second Edition takes you through interfacing with various database backends, such as MySQL, MongoDB, and Redis, working with web sockets, and interfacing with network protocols, such as SMTP. Additionally, there are recipes on handling streams of data, security implementations, writing your own Node modules, and different ways to take your apps live.