/node-academy

Create simple and useful Node.js apps

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Build a Dad Jokes Generator CLI
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Build a Dad Jokes Generator CLI

Table of Contents

Course Overview

An intro to Node.js via a set of self-guided mini-projects from the command-line.

About this course

Who This Course Is For

Any engineer who wants to:

  • gain a deeper understanding of the Node API
  • write their own Node.js framework
  • author their own useful Node.js modules
  • be able to fix Node.js libraries when they break, and submit pull requests to your favorite Node.js projects to make them faster and more secure

Course Prerequisites:

  • A beginner audience who is hearing about your topic for the first time
  • You should be comfortable in your terminal (shell) and have admin (sudo) privileges on your workstation.
  • Experience in NodeJS is not required but recommended.
  • Download the latest version of node.
  • Text-editor (VSCode or Sublime)
  • Source Code from Github

Anatomy Of A Node App

What is Node

A conceptual overview of Node.js. What Node is, what V8 is, and how they both work, as well as how they relate to each other.

Common Node conventions

We'll talk about a few standard conventions used with Node.js, as well as the differences between writing javascript for Node.js and writing it for the browser.

Build a Dad Jokes Generator CLI

Now we're going to build a Node.js CLI App that randomizes a set of corny dad jokes from a text file jokes.txt. Doing this exercise will familiarize yourself with several key sections of the Node.js docs:

  • "fs", the file system,
  • lib,
  • string decoder, and
  • path

Filesystem structure

Our filesystem structure will look like this:

nodejs-dad-joke-generator-cli-project-structure

Image: "nodejs-dad-joke-generator-cli-project-structure.png"

Setup

Basic Scaffolding

Resources

Our project will contain the following files:

directory-tree

Image: "directory-tree.png"

We'll go through each file one by one to understand how they relate to each other.

Test the CLI

Now that we've gone through all the files that make up the project, it's time to test our CLI app.

To start the app run:

node index.js

To stop the app run:

CTRL + C

Source code

Resources

Final Review

Today, we’ve learned how to create a simple Node.js CLI that prints random jokes to the console. We learned how to use the file system fs module to get all the jokes and return them to the user.

Specifically, the process of how fs.readFileSync():

  1. Reads the text file containing the jokes.
  2. Turns the string into an array using regex.
  3. Returns the contents of the path.

Further Reading

If you want to get started with Node.js or need a bit of inspiration, here are some resources to check out.