Node & Express as Workflow Tools “Enterprise” and “Node.js” are generally two terms which are rarely seen together, but developing on an (what are considered) “enterprise level” stack doesn’t mean you can’t sneak some Node.js into your workflow. This talk will cover using Node.js, Express, Grunt/Gulp, Commander to build custom workflow tools, mock APIs, and test suites to allow you to maintain sanity while working with more traditional environments. We will cover a simple use case for using Node and Express to smooth Front-end development workflow, and how to package your custom tool as an NPM module for others to install. Presented live at FITC's Spotlight: MEAN Stacks event held on March 28th, 2014 More info at FITC.ca

1. Building Custom
Development
Tools With Node.js
Commander.js
Topher Bullock
Software Engineer - Pivotal
@topherbullock
.. and other tools to help
along the way.

2. About
● Topher Bullock
● Software Engineer - Pivotal;
working on Cloud Foundry
Services.
● Full-stack JavaScript
@topherbullock
pivotal-topher-bullock

3. ● Faster / Easier Development
● Rapid Prototyping
● Task Automation
● Test Driven Development
● Build Systems
● Debugging

4. Case Study : Tomcat Woes
● Large scale JS MVC app
● leveraging APIs served by Spring*
● eventually need to deploy everything
together in one big happy .war file
● working on everything together meant being
tied to an IDE to deploy web app changes to
Tomcat ~> slow development.
* Disclaimer : Spring is totally cool and is a solid framework for Java projects.
They are making strides for improving workflows; e.g Spring Boot

5. Observability
Browser
Tomcat
File System
(Workspace)
IDE

6. Using a traditional stack in
production doesn’t mean you can’t
use Node.js for development.
Enterprises will resist deploying
Node.js in favor of other
technologies.

8. Commander.js

9. JIFASNIF
JavaScript is Fun And
So Node.js is Fun“

11. ● CLI tool written in Node.js
● Task Automation / Build Tool (mvn-ish)
● Simple Config / Pre Built tasks
Grunt

12. Extending Grunt
● Roll your own Grunt tasks
● Programmatically run tasks and listen for
events

14. ● The E in MEAN :3
● Great for quickly spinning up a mock API
server
● Good plumbing to serve front-end app for
development
Express

15. A Few CLI Libraries

16. Awesome colored output for
console.
Progress bars, because
they’re awesome.
Useful CLI Tools
General purpose CLI lib
Useful command prompt
tools; works well alongside
CommanderJS
Command.prompt() removed in 2.0.0

18. Contrary to the belief of many, ‘npm’ is not in
fact an abbreviation for ‘Node Package
Manager.’ It is a recursive bacronymic
abbreviation for ‘npm is not an acronym.’ (If it
was ‘ninaa’, then it would be an acronym, and
thus incorrectly named.)
“
”

19. ● Not "Node Package Manager.".. but it is
the Package Manager for Node. -_-
● Great for distributing your tools
● $ npm link is your friend
NPM

21. Thanks!
Questions?
@topherbullock
pivotal-topher-bullock
topher.bullock@pivotallabs.com