What this book covers

Chapter 1, Making a Web Server, covers how to serve dynamic and static content, cache files in memory, stream large files straight from disk over HTTP, and secure your web server.

Chapter 2, Exploring the HTTP Object, explains the process of receiving and processing POST requests and file uploads using Node as an HTTP client. It also discusses how to throttle downloads.

Chapter 3, Working with Data Serialization, explains how to convert data from your apps into XML and JSON formats when sending to the browser or third-party APIs.

Chapter 4, Interfacing with Databases, covers how to implement persistent data stores with Redis, CouchDB, MongoDB, MySQL, or plain CSV files.

Chapter 5, Employing Streams, is included in the second edition. From streaming fundamentals to creating custom stream abstractions, this chapter introduces a powerful API that can boost the speed and memory efficiency of processing large amounts of data.

Chapter 6, Going Real Time, helps you to make real-time web apps with modern browser WebSocket technology, and gracefully degrade to long polling and other methods with Socket.IO.

Chapter 7, Accelerating Development with Express, explains how to leverage the Express framework to achieve rapid web development. It also covers the use of template languages and CSS engines, such as LESS and Stylus.

Chapter 8, Implementing Security, Encryption, and Authentication, explains how to set up an SSL-secured web server, use the crypto module to create strong password hashes, and protect your users from cross-site request forgery attacks.

Chapter 9, Integrating Network Paradigms, discusses how to send e-mails and create your own e-mail server, send SMS text messages, implement virtual hosting, and do fun and interesting things with raw TCP.

Chapter 10, Writing Your Own Node Modules, explains how to create a test suite, write a solution, refactor, improve and extend, and then deploy your own Node module.

Chapter 11, Taking it Live, discusses how to deploy your web apps to a live server, ensure your apps stay live with crash recovery techniques, implement a continuous deployment workflow, or alternatively, simply use a Platform as a Service Provider.