Node.js

In this tutorial I’ll show how to piece together the required NPM modules to build a REST API in Node.js with proper Swagger documentation. We’re going to use Express as the HTTP framework, and the Swagger documentation will be written as inline comments within the code, as close as possible to the handling endpoint or models that will implement the contract, so it will be harder for them to eventually diverge.

Every single working day I spend between 2 and 2.5 hours in a train. And I feel pretty lucky about this, mostly because is one single train, no need to pay attention for switch overs or other kind of public transports, and that allows me to invest that time in whatever task I want: podcasts, videos, blogging or even programming. And that’s what I want this post to focus in, because there are plenty of posts that explain how to use a Chromebook for day-to-day tasks (even being offline) but not that many that talk about programming in node.js using a Chromebook.

During last year, I had the chance to work as CTO of a startup, working mainly within MEAN stack. I was happy, the technology I was working with was in a great hype and its community grew bigger and bigger with lots of projects popping up everywhere. But life is continuously changing, and I started to work in a new company within Java/JEE technologies. I was back to my first days as a professional computer engineer. Java ecosystem is huge, and there are some well established tools that you must control if you want to progress as Java developer. But Java -the language- is getting older, and newer languages are more expressive and require less boiler plate code (don’t get me wrong, JVM is a great platform, and probably the best one for enterprise applications). Even with the recent release of Java 8, which introduced Lambdas and some functional style capabilities, I still feel like writing too much, or at least much more than with other languages.

The way you structure your code is a key factor when you define your source code organization. It will make your life easier or miserable, and once this structure is established it will become a really tedious task to redefine it. That’s why you know about the different patterns available and choose the one fits your project best. But, why should I care about modules? Well, is the way Javascript offers to organize and encapsulate your code, and if you don’t think you need to do it, because maybe it’s a small project or you don’t care at all, trust me, you are making a huge mistake!

Javascript is an old well-known friend that is growing rapidly and gaining traction since Node.js, a command line Javascript interpreter based on Chrome V8 Javascript Virtual Machine, was published. Its community is building great stuff, and more and more companies are moving into this stack, with a high success ratio. http://nodegeek.net Luckily for me, for my last two professional years I have been involved in one way or another with it, been able to relearn the language and discover its framework. And since not long ago, I’ve been writing articles for a new site where I could focus about this amazing programming stack:

Code modularization, achieved in one way or another, is a technique a good developer must aim for because it helps keeping things small, well-tested and organized. And of course, it follows the DRY directive. So as a Node.js developer (and maybe contributor to the Open Source), creating and publishing an NPM module is one of those steps you will eventually face. Probably if any Node.js developer would have to pick an indispensable tool of the ecosystem, npm would win by far. Its greatness resides in how much easy is to build applications using on of several modules, each of them providing one certain functionality, as if they were building bricks, picking the right tool for each task.

The Node.js ecosystem is quite young and prolific: new tools appear almost every day or week, changing and turning upside down your current workflow, always trying to squeeze a little more productivity to your time and effort or simply making your work easier. As an example, take a look on the NodeFramework page, where Azat Mardanov (@azat_co) collects lot’s of frameworks and utilities related to Node.js. Or NodeWebModules, more web oriented than the previous one, from Caio Ribeiro Pereira (@crp_underground).

Talking about Node.js history, it’s talking a little bit about V8 history. But let’s start with a one line definition of what it is: Node.js is a platform built around Google Chrome V8 Javascript engine, to create lightweight, fast, scalable, event-driven and non-blocking I/O applications. So lets begin talking about Node.js origins, the V8 javascript engine. V8 is an opensource project by Google and it is in the very core of Google Chrome browser. Its first public release was on September 2, 2008, same date Chrome’s first release was announced. It was a big step forward in browsers’ performance, and it pushed browsers’ technology to a new whole level. It’s written in C++ and its biggest revolution was that it precompiled the Javascript source code to machine code instead of just interpret it and then applied a JIT process again in runtime to improve dynamic code execution.

Wellcome to this new site where you’ll find lots of information about Node.js, Javascript and HTML 5 technologies! This project is a chance for me to share my passion about these new and amazing technologies, trying to make you easier to step into it and to discuss and enjoy technology talks to whomever who wants to. It will be mainly focused on Node.js, but sometimes we will talk about generic Javascript or even frontend Javascript related to HTML5 capabilities.