This document discusses Node.js and its suitability for web development. It describes Node.js as a platform built on Chrome's JavaScript runtime that uses non-blocking I/O and event-driven programming to enable fast and scalable network applications. The document emphasizes Node.js' focus on I/O-bound real-time applications and lists some of its capabilities like serving files and forms, server-side mashups, writing files, HTTP authentication, sockets programming, and MVC routing with many available libraries to support development.

1. Essential Node for Web Developers
 Mike Amundsen
Principal API Architect
Layer 7 Technologies
 @mamund
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2. Preliminaries
 Mike Amundsen
 Web Architect, Author, Presenter
 Software Explorer
 Principal API Architect, Layer 7 Technologies
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3. Last Project
 Building Hypermedia APIs w/ HTML5 & Node (November 2011)
 Methodology for writing/maintaining business-level APIs in the cloud.
 Real solutions for real use-cases.
 Three Servers, Six Clients, 200+ pages.
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4. Next Project
 RESTful Web APIs (Summer 2013)
 Co-author with Leonard Richardson
 Follow up to Richardson/Ruby’s RESTful Web Services (2007)
 Focus on scaling up application-level interoperability with hypermedia
 Beyond HTML, XML, and JSON is …
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5. Let's start with a bit of
Philosophy...
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6. Unix Philosophy
 Write programs that do one thing and do it well.
 Write programs to work together.
 Write programs to handle text streams.
- Douglas McIlroy
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7. Node Philosophy (possible)
• Write modules that do one thing and do it well.
• Write modules to work together.
• Write modules to handle streams and events
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8. Eric S. Raymond's Design Rules
"Rule of Diversity: Distrust all claims for one true way"
-- Eric S. Raymond
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9. Reminder:
My Examples
are NOT
the
"One True Way"
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10. Essentially, Node is...
"...a platform built on Chrome's JavaScript runtime for
easily building fast, scalable network applications."
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11. Node is…
“Node is intended to be a very low-level library that
facilitates higher-level extensions and abstractions in
userland. It is more like C than it is like Python, and that is
by design.” – Isaac Schlueter
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12. And it's different because....
"Node.js uses an event-driven, non-blocking I/O model that
makes it lightweight and efficient, perfect for data-
intensive real-time applications that run across distributed
devices."
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13. So that means....
"Most of the applications we're writing today are heavily
I/O bound. Because of the event-driven nature of
JavaScript (and Node by extension), whatever you write
with it is going to be very fast." - Guillermo Rauch
(socket.io)
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14. But does it run on my machine?
"To build a diverse open source
community, you need a wide
platform," - Paul Querna,
Rackspace
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15. Essential NodeJS on a single slide (well, almost)
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16. Ok, introduce me then...
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17. Hello, Node!
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18. Ok, but how do I deliver files?
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19. Ok, but how do I deliver files using streams?
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20. Not bad; how about HTML Forms?
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21. Cool. Now how about a server-side mash-up?
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22. Yeah, but how do you write files?
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23. What about HTTP Authentication?
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24. Ok, but where's that "sockets" stuff?
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25. Alright, how about MVC & routing?
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26. Hey, this is all 'async' & hard, right?
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27. So are there lots of libraries?
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28. So are there lots of libraries?
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29. Bottom Line…
 While Node *is* Javascript, the ethos is closer to C/Unix
 Don’t get tied up in the “Evented IO” stuff; just write your code and enjoy
 Async is the future; learn to love the future.
 Get to know the NPM library; lots of good stuff there.
 Check out Shelly Power’s “Learning Node” book
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30. So....
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31. Node.js...
• “Low-level” Javascript
• Non-blocking I/O
• Cross Platform
• Pages, Forms, Services, APIs, Sockets
• MVC, Templates, ...
• 1000s of available libraries
• All Open Source
Oh yeah, one more question...
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32. Why not join the hipster Nod-ies?
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33. Essential Node for Web Developers
 Mike Amundsen
Principal API Architect
Layer 7 Technologies
 @mamund
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