Lessons in Node

Short lessons in Node.js beginning with simple Hello World examples.

Lesson 1 - Hello World from the command line

The first lesson shows how to print 'Hello World!' from the command line. This example is used to illustrate that plain old JavaScript is valid in Node.

console.log("Hello World!");

Lesson 2 - Hello World in the browser

The second lesson shows how to print 'Hello World!' in the browser. Here we invoke the http class to present the text in the browser. The results can be viewed by browsing to http://localhost:3000/

var http = require('http');

http.createServer(function(req,res){
        res.writeHead(200, { 'Content-Type': 'text/plain' });
        res.end('Hello World!');
}).listen(3000);

console.log('Server started on localhost:3000; press Ctrl-C to terminate....');

Lesson 3 - Hello World in the browser with additional paths

Building on Lesson 2 we add an option for browsing to another path, /about. We also add a 404 Not Found page for invalid links.

var http = require('http');

http.createServer(function(req,res){
	// Normalize url by removing querystring, optional trailing slash, and making it lowercase.
	var path = req.url.replace(/\/?(?:\?.*)?$/, '').toLowerCase();
	switch(path) {
		case '':
			res.writeHead(200, { 'Content-Type': 'text/plain' });
			res.end('Hello World!');
			break;
		case '/about':
			res.writeHead(200, { 'Content-Type': 'text/plain' });
			res.end('All about this website...');
			break;
		default:
			res.writeHead(404, { 'Content-Type': 'text/plain' });
			res.end('Not Found');
			break;
	}
}).listen(3000);

console.log('Server started on localhost:3000; press Ctrl-C to terminate....');

Lesson 4 - Hello World with the Express.js web framework package.

This lesson get its own folder! Look at the README.md file in the lesson-04 folder for the steps to create a web-based Node.js application using the popular Express.js web framework.

Lesson 5 - Handlebars Templating Engine

This lesson introduces the Handlebars templating engine for Node. See the README.md file in the lesson-05 folder.

Lesson 6 - Static Middleware

In this lesson we show how to use middleware to define a path.

Lesson 7 - Routes

A variety of methods showing how to consolidate and handle all the routes within a project.

Method 1 - Invoke each route file individually

Method 2 - Invoke from a single routes.js file as described in Chapter 14 of Ethan Brown's Web Development with Node and Express (https://github.com/EthanRBrown/web-development-with-node-and-express/tree/master/ch14)

Method X - Use FS to read files in /routes folder

Roadmap

Lesson X - More static middleware with hard-coded adages for random message-of-the-day

Lesson X - Sessions (non-db)

Lesson X - Sequelize, models folder

Lesson X - Session revisited (using db)

Lesson X - Passport.js

Lesson X - Credentials - via CLI - via ENV vars - via config file

Lesson X - Audio - HTML5 tag - JavaScript audio commands - File formats - Working with iOS - Audio sprites

dan-king/lessons-in-node