Table of Contents

Preface
The [Link] Handbook
Conclusion
Preface
The [Link] Handbook follows the 80/20 rule: learn in 20% of the time the
80% of a topic.

In particular, the goal is to get you up to speed quickly with [Link].

This book is written by Flavio. I publish programming tutorials on my

blog [Link] and I organize a yearly bootcamp at [Link].

You can reach me on Twitter @flaviocopes.

Enjoy!
The [Link] Handbook
1. Introduction to [Link]
1.1. [Link] has a vast number of libraries
1.2. An example [Link] application
1.3. [Link] frameworks and tools
2. A brief history of [Link]
2.0.1. 2009
2.0.2. 2010
2.0.3. 2011
2.0.4. 2012
2.0.5. 2013
2.0.6. 2014
2.0.7. 2015
2.0.8. 2016
2.0.9. 2017
2.0.10. 2018
2.0.11. 2019
2.0.12. 2020
2.0.13. 2021
2.0.14. 2022
3. How to install [Link]
4. How much JavaScript do you need to know to use Node?
5. Differences between Node and the Browser
6. The V8 JavaScript Engine
 6.1. Other JS engines
6.2. The quest for performance
6.3. Compilation
7. Run [Link] scripts from the command line
7.1. Restart the application automatically
8. How to exit from a [Link] program
9. How to read environment variables from [Link]
10. Where to host a [Link] app
10.1. Simplest option ever: local tunnel
10.2. Zero configuration deployments
10.2.1. Glitch
10.2.2. Codepen
10.3. Serverless
10.4. PAAS
10.4.1. Zeit Now
10.4.2. Nanobox
10.4.3. Heroku
10.4.4. Microsoft Azure
10.4.5. Google Cloud Platform
10.5. Virtual Private Server
10.6. Bare metal
11. How to use the [Link] REPL
11.1. Use the tab to autocomplete
11.2. Exploring JavaScript objects
11.3. Explore global objects
11.4. The _ special variable
11.5. The Up arrow key
 11.6. Dot commands
11.7. Run REPL from JavaScript file
12. Node, accept arguments from the command line
13. Output to the command line using Node
13.1. Basic output using the console module
13.2. Clear the console
13.3. Counting elements
13.4. Reset counting
13.5. Print the stack trace
13.6. Calculate the time spent
13.7. stdout and stderr
13.8. Color the output
13.9. Create a progress bar
14. Accept input from the command line in Node
15. An introduction to the npm package manager
15.1. Introduction to npm
15.2. Downloads
15.2.1. Installing all dependencies
15.2.2. Installing a single package
15.2.3. Updating packages
15.3. Versioning
15.4. Running Tasks
16. Where does npm install the packages?
17. How to use or execute a package installed using npm
18. The [Link] guide
18.1. The file structure
18.2. Properties breakdown
 18.2.1. name
18.2.2. author
18.2.3. contributors
18.2.4. bugs
18.2.5. homepage
18.2.6. version
18.2.7. license
18.2.8. keywords
18.2.9. description
18.2.10. repository
18.2.11. main
18.2.12. private
18.2.13. scripts
18.2.14. dependencies
18.2.15. devDependencies
18.2.16. engines
18.2.17. browserslist
18.2.18. Command-specific properties
18.3. Package versions
19. The [Link] file
19.1. An example
20. Find the installed version of an npm package
21. Install an older version of an npm package
22. Update all the Node dependencies to their latest version
22.1. How Packages Become Dependencies
22.2. Update All Packages to the Latest Version
23. Semantic Versioning using npm
24. Uninstalling npm packages with npm uninstall

25. npm global or local packages

26. npm dependencies and devDependencies
27. The npx Node Package Runner
27.1. Easily run local commands
27.2. Installation-less command execution
27.3. Run some code using a different [Link] version
27.4. Run arbitrary code snippets directly from a URL
28. The [Link] Event Loop
28.1. Introduction
28.2. Blocking the event loop
28.3. The call stack
28.4. A simple event loop explanation
28.5. Queuing function execution
28.6. The Message Queue
28.7. ES6 Job Queue
29. Understanding [Link]()
30. Understanding setImmediate()
31. Discover JavaScript Timers
31.1. setTimeout()

31.1.1. Zero delay

31.2. setInterval()

31.3. Recursive setTimeout

32. The Node Event emitter
33. Working with file descriptors in Node
34. Node file stats
35. Node File Paths
 35.1. Getting information out of a path
35.2. Working with paths
36. Reading files with Node
37. Writing files with Node
37.1. Append to a file
37.2. Using streams
38. Working with folders
38.1. Check if a folder exists
38.2. Create a new folder
38.3. Read the content of a directory
38.4. Rename a folder
38.5. Remove a folder
39. The Node fs module
40. The Node path module
40.0.1. [Link]()

40.0.2. [Link]()

40.0.3. [Link]()

40.0.4. [Link]()

40.0.5. [Link]()

40.0.6. [Link]()

40.0.7. [Link]()

40.0.8. [Link]()

40.0.9. [Link]()

40.0.10. [Link]()

41. The Node os module

41.1. [Link]()

41.2. [Link]()
 41.3. [Link]()

41.4. [Link]()

41.5. [Link]()

41.6. [Link]()

41.7. [Link]()

41.8. [Link]()

41.9. [Link]()

41.10. [Link]()

41.11. [Link]()

41.12. [Link]()

41.13. [Link]()

41.14. [Link]()

42. The Node events module

42.1. [Link]()

42.2. [Link]()

42.3. [Link]()

42.4. [Link]()

42.5. [Link]()

42.6. [Link]()

42.7. [Link]()

42.8. [Link]()

42.9. [Link]()

42.10. [Link]()

42.11. [Link]()

42.12. [Link]()

42.13. [Link]()

42.14. [Link]()
43. The Node http module
43.1. Properties
43.1.1. [Link]

43.1.2. http.STATUS_CODES

43.1.3. [Link]

43.2. Methods
43.2.1. [Link]()

43.2.2. [Link]()

43.2.3. [Link]()

43.3. Classes
43.3.1. [Link]

43.3.2. [Link]

43.3.3. [Link]

43.3.4. [Link]

43.3.5. [Link]

44. [Link] Streams

44.1. What are streams
44.2. Why streams
44.3. An example of a stream
44.4. pipe()
44.5. Streams-powered [Link] APIs
44.6. Different types of streams
44.7. How to create a readable stream
44.8. How to create a writable stream
44.9. How to get data from a readable stream
44.10. How to send data to a writable stream
44.11. Signaling a writable stream that you ended writing
 44.12. How to create a transform stream
45. Node, the difference between development and production
46. Error handling in [Link]
46.1. Creating exceptions
46.2. Error objects
46.3. Handling exceptions
46.4. Catching uncaught exceptions
46.5. Exceptions with promises
46.6. Error handling with async/await
47. Build an HTTP Server
48. Making HTTP requests with [Link]
48.1. Perform a GET Request
48.2. Perform a POST Request
48.3. PUT and DELETE
49. Get HTTP request body data
1. Introduction to [Link]
[Link] is an open-source and cross-platform JavaScript runtime
environment. It is a popular tool for almost any kind of project!

[Link] runs the V8 JavaScript engine, the core of Google Chrome, outside
of the browser. This allows [Link] to be very performant.

A [Link] app runs in a single process, without creating a new thread for
every request. [Link] provides a set of asynchronous I/O primitives in its
standard library that prevent JavaScript code from blocking and generally,
libraries in [Link] are written using non-blocking paradigms, making
blocking behavior the exception rather than the norm.

When [Link] performs an I/O operation, like reading from the network,
accessing a database or the filesystem, instead of blocking the thread and
wasting CPU cycles waiting, [Link] will resume the operations when the
response comes back.

This allows [Link] to handle thousands of concurrent connections with a

single server without introducing the burden of managing thread
concurrency, which could be a significant source of bugs.

[Link] has a unique advantage because millions of frontend developers

that write JavaScript for the browser are now able to write the server-side
code in addition to the client-side code without the need to learn a
completely different language.
In [Link] the new ECMAScript standards can be used without problems,
as you don't have to wait for all your users to update their browsers - you
are in charge of deciding which ECMAScript version to use by changing
the [Link] version, and you can also enable specific experimental features
by running [Link] with flags.

1.1. [Link] has a vast number of libraries

npm with its simple structure helped the ecosystem of [Link] proliferate
and now the npm registry hosts almost 500.000 open source packages you
can freely use.

1.2. An example [Link] application

The most common example Hello World of [Link] is a web server:
 const http = require('http')

const hostname = '[Link]'

const port = 3000

const server = [Link]((req, res) => {

[Link] = 200

[Link]('Content-Type', 'text/plain')

[Link]('Hello World\n')

})

[Link](port, hostname, () => {

[Link](`Server running at [Link]

})

To run this snippet, save it as a [Link] file and run node [Link]

in your terminal.

This code first includes the [Link] http module.

[Link] has an amazing standard library, including a first-class support for

networking.

The createServer() method of http creates a new HTTP server and

returns it.
The server is set to listen on the specified port and hostname. When the
server is ready, the callback function is called, in this case informing us that
the server is running.

Whenever a new request is received, the request event is called,

providing two objects: a request (an [Link] object) and a
response (an [Link] object).

Those 2 objects are essential to handle the HTTP call.

The first provides the request details. In this simple example, this is not
used, but you could access the request headers and request data.

The second is used to return data to the caller.

In this case with

[Link] = 200

we set the statusCode property to 200, to indicate a successful response.

We set the Content-Type header:

[Link]('Content-Type', 'text/plain')

and we end close the response, adding the content as an argument to

end() :
 [Link]('Hello World\n')

1.3. [Link] frameworks and tools

[Link] is a low-level platform, and to make things easier and more
interesting for developers thousands of libraries were built upon [Link].

Many of those established over time as popular options. Here is a non-

comprehensive list of the ones I consider very relevant and worth learning:

Express, one of the most simple yet powerful ways to create a web
server. Its minimalist approach, unopinionated, focused on the core
features of a server, is key to its success.
Meteor, an incredibly powerful full-stack framework, powering you
with an isomorphic approach to building apps with JavaScript, sharing
code on the client and the server. Once an off-the-shelf tool that
provided everything, now integrates with frontend libs React, Vue and
Angular. Can be used to create mobile apps as well.
koa, built by the same team behind Express, aims to be even simpler
and smaller, building on top of years of knowledge. The new project
born out of the need to create incompatible changes without disrupting
the existing community.
[Link], a framework to render server-side rendered React
applications.
Micro, a very lightweight server to create asynchronous HTTP
microservices.
[Link], a real-time communication engine to build network
applications.
SvelteKit: Sapper is a framework for building web applications of all
sizes, with a beautiful development experience and flexible filesystem-
based routing. Offers SSR and more!
Remix: Remix is a fullstack web framework for building excellent
user experiences for the web. It comes out of the box with everything
you need to build modern web applications (both frontend and
backend) and deploy them to any JavaScript-based runtime
environment (including [Link]).
Fastify a fast and efficient web framework highly focused on
providing the best developer experience with the least overhead and a
powerful plugin architecture, inspired by Hapi and Express.
2. A brief history of [Link]
Believe it or not, [Link] is only 13 years old.

In comparison, JavaScript is 26 years old and the Web is 33 years old.

13 years isn't a very long time in tech, but [Link] seems to have been
around forever.

In this post, we draw the big picture of [Link] in its history, to put things in
perspective.

A little bit of history JavaScript is a programming language that was created

at Netscape as a scripting tool to manipulate web pages inside their browser,
Netscape Navigator.

Part of the business model of Netscape was to sell Web Servers, which
included an environment called Netscape LiveWire that could create
dynamic pages using server-side JavaScript. Unfortunately, Netscape
LiveWire wasn't very successful and server-side JavaScript wasn't
popularized until recently, by the introduction of [Link].

One key factor that led to the rise of [Link] was the timing. Just a few
years earlier, JavaScript had started to be considered as a more serious
language, thanks to "Web 2.0" applications (such as Flickr, Gmail, etc.) that
showed the world what a modern experience on the web could be like.
JavaScript engines also became considerably better as many browsers
competed to offer users the best performance. Development teams behind
major browsers worked hard to offer better support for JavaScript and find
ways to make JavaScript run faster. The engine that [Link] uses under the
hood, V8 (also known as Chrome V8 for being the open-source JavaScript
engine of The Chromium Project), improved significantly due to this
competition.

[Link] happened to be built in the right place and right time, but luck isn't
the only reason why it is popular today. It introduces a lot of innovative
thinking and approaches for JavaScript server-side development that have
already helped many developers.

2.0.1. 2009
[Link] is born
The first version of npm

2.0.2. 2010
Express is born
[Link] is born

2.0.3. 2011
npm hits version 1.0
Big companies start adopting Node: LinkedIn, Uber, etc
2.0.4. 2012
Adoption continues very rapidly

2.0.5. 2013
First big blogging platform using Node: Ghost
Koa is born

2.0.6. 2014
The Big Fork: [Link] is a major fork of [Link], with the goal of
introducing ES6 support and moving faster

2.0.7. 2015
The [Link] Foundation is born
[Link] is merged back into [Link]
Node 4 (no 1, 2, 3 versions were previously released)

2.0.8. 2016
The leftpad incident
Yarn is born
Node 6
2.0.9. 2017
npm focuses more on security
Node 8 - 9
HTTP/2
V8 introduces Node in its testing suite, officially making Node a target
for the JS engine, in addition to Chrome
3 billion npm downloads every week

2.0.10. 2018
Node 10 - 11
ES modules .mjs experimental support

2.0.11. 2019
Node 12 - 13

2.0.12. 2020
Node 14 - 15
GitHub (owned by Microsoft) acquired NPM

2.0.13. 2021
[Link] 16
[Link] 17
2.0.14. 2022
[Link] 18
3. How to install [Link]
[Link] can be installed in different ways.

Let me how you the most common and convenient ones.

Official packages for all the major platforms are available at

[Link]

There you can choose to download an LTS version (LTS stands for Long
Term Support) or the latest available release. As usual, the latest version
contains the latest goodies.

On the site they have packages for Windows, Linux, macOS.

One very convenient way to install [Link] is through a package manager.

In this case, every operating system has its own.

On macOS, Homebrew is the de-facto standard, and - once installed -

allows to install [Link] very easily, by running this command in the CLI:

brew install node

Other package managers for Linux and Windows are listed in

[Link]
 nvm is a popular way to run Node. It allows you to easily switch the Node
version, and install new versions to try and easily rollback if something
breaks, for example.

It is also very useful to test your code with old Node versions.

See [Link] for more information about this option.

My suggestion is to use the official installer if you are just starting out and
you don't use Homebrew already, otherwise, Homebrew is my favorite
solution because I can easily update node by running brew upgrade node .

In any case, when Node is installed you'll have access to the node

executable program in the command line.

4. How much JavaScript do you need
to know to use Node?
As a beginner, it's hard to get to a point where you are confident enough in
your programming abilities.

While learning to code, you might also be confused at where does

JavaScript end, and where [Link] begins, and vice versa.

I would recommend you to have a good grasp of the main JavaScript

concepts before diving into [Link]:

Lexical Structure
Expressions
Types
Variables
Functions
this
Arrow Functions
Loops
Loops and Scope
Arrays
Template Literals
Semicolons
Strict Mode
ECMAScript 6, 2016, 2017
With those concepts in mind, you are well on your road to become a
proficient JavaScript developer, in both the browser and in [Link].

The following concepts are also key to understand asynchronous

programming, which is one fundamental part of [Link]:

Asynchronous programming and callbacks

Timers
Promises
Async and Await
Closures
The Event Loop
5. Differences between Node and the
Browser
Both the browser and [Link] use JavaScript as their programming
language.

Building apps that run in the browser is a completely different thing than
building a [Link] application.

Despite the fact that it's always JavaScript, there are some key differences
that make the experience radically different.

From the perspective of a frontend developer who extensively uses

JavaScript, [Link] apps bring with them a huge advantage: the comfort of
programming everything - the frontend and the backend - in a single
language.

You have a huge opportunity because we know how hard it is to fully,

deeply learn a programming language, and by using the same language to
perform all your work on the web - both on the client and on the server,
you're in a unique position of advantage.

What changes is the ecosystem.

In the browser, most of the time what you are doing is interacting with the
DOM, or other Web Platform APIs like Cookies. Those do not exist in
Node, of course. You don't have the document , window and all the other
objects that are provided by the browser.

And in the browser, we don't have all the nice APIs that [Link] provides
through its modules, like the filesystem access functionality.

Another big difference is that in [Link] you control the environment.

Unless you are building an open source application that anyone can deploy
anywhere, you know which version of [Link] you will run the application
on. Compared to the browser environment, where you don't get the luxury
to choose what browser your visitors will use, this is very convenient.

This means that you can write all the modern ES6-7-8-9 JavaScript that
your Node version supports.

Since JavaScript moves so fast, but browsers can be a bit slow and users a
bit slow to upgrade, sometimes on the web, you are stuck to use older
JavaScript / ECMAScript releases.

You can use Babel to transform your code to be ES5-compatible before

shipping it to the browser, but in Node, you won't need that.

Another difference is that Node originally used the CommonJS module

system, while in the browser we use ES Modules, a standard that's recently
landed in [Link] as well ([Link]

Going forward ES Modules ( import ) are the way to load modules across
all JavaScript, frontend or backend, but [Link] still supports the require

syntax.
6. The V8 JavaScript Engine
V8 is the name of the JavaScript engine that powers Google Chrome. It's
the thing that takes our JavaScript and executes it while browsing with
Chrome.

V8 provides the runtime environment in which JavaScript executes. The

DOM, and the other Web Platform APIs are provided by the browser.

The cool thing is that the JavaScript engine is independent by the browser
in which it's hosted. This key feature enabled the rise of [Link]. V8 was
chosen to be the engine that powered [Link] back in 2009, and as the
popularity of [Link] exploded, V8 became the engine that now powers an
incredible amount of server-side code written in JavaScript.

The [Link] ecosystem is huge and thanks to it V8 also powers desktop

apps, with projects like Electron.

6.1. Other JS engines

Other browsers have their own JavaScript engine:

Firefox has Spidermonkey

Safari has JavaScriptCore (also called Nitro)
Edge was originally based on Chakra but has more recently been
rebuilt using Chromium and the V8 engine.

and many others exist as well.

All those engines implement the ECMA ES-262 standard, also called
ECMAScript, the standard used by JavaScript.

6.2. The quest for performance

V8 is written in C++, and it's continuously improved. It is portable and runs
on Mac, Windows, Linux and several other systems.

In this V8 introduction, we will ignore the implementation details of V8:

they can be found on more authoritative sites (e.g. the V8 official site), and
they change over time, often radically.

V8 is always evolving, just like the other JavaScript engines around, to

speed up the Web and the [Link] ecosystem.

On the web, there is a race for performance that's been going on for years,
and we (as users and developers) benefit a lot from this competition
because we get faster and more optimized machines year after year.

6.3. Compilation
JavaScript is generally considered an interpreted language, but modern
JavaScript engines no longer just interpret JavaScript, they compile it.

This has been happening since 2009, when the SpiderMonkey JavaScript
compiler was added to Firefox 3.5, and everyone followed this idea.

JavaScript is internally compiled by V8 with just-in-time (JIT) compilation

to speed up the execution.
This might seem counter-intuitive, but since the introduction of Google
Maps in 2004, JavaScript has evolved from a language that was generally
executing a few dozens of lines of code to complete applications with
thousands to hundreds of thousands of lines running in the browser.

Our applications can now run for hours inside a browser, rather than being
just a few form validation rules or simple scripts.

In this new world, compiling JavaScript makes perfect sense because while
it might take a little bit more to have the JavaScript ready, once done it's
going to be much more performant than purely interpreted code.
7. Run [Link] scripts from the
command line
The usual way to run a [Link] program is to run the globally available
node command (once you install [Link]) and pass the name of the file
you want to execute.

If your main [Link] application file is [Link] , you can call it by typing:

node [Link]

Above, you are explicitly telling the shell to run your script with node .
You can also embed this information into your JavaScript file with a
"shebang" line. The "shebang" is the first line in the file, and tells the OS
which interpreter to use for running the script. Below is the first line of
JavaScript:

#!/usr/bin/node

Above, we are explicitly giving the absolute path of interpreter. Not all
operating systems have node in the bin folder, but all should have env .
You can tell the OS to run env with node as parameter:
 #!/usr/bin/env node

// your code

To use a shebang, your file should have executable permission. You can
give [Link] the executable permission by running:

chmod u+x [Link]

While running the command, make sure you are in the same directory
which contains the [Link] file.

7.1. Restart the application automatically

The node command has to be re-executed in bash whenever there is a
change in the application, to restart the application automatically, nodemon

module is used.

Install the nodemon module globally to system path

npm i -g nodemon

You can also install nodemon as a development-dependency

npm i -D nodemon
This local installation of nodemon can be run by calling it from within npm
script such as npm start or using npx nodemon.

Run the application using nodemon followed by application file name.

nodemon [Link]
8. How to exit from a [Link] program
There are various ways to terminate a [Link] application.

When running a program in the console you can close it with ctrl-C , but
what we want to discuss here is programmatically exiting.

Let's start with the most drastic one, and see why you're better off not using
it.

The process core module provides a handy method that allows you to
programmatically exit from a [Link] program: [Link]() .

When [Link] runs this line, the process is immediately forced to terminate.

This means that any callback that's pending, any network request still being
sent, any filesystem access, or processes writing to stdout or stderr -
all is going to be ungracefully terminated right away.

If this is fine for you, you can pass an integer that signals the operating
system the exit code:

[Link](1)

By default the exit code is 0 , which means success. Different exit codes
have different meaning, which you might want to use in your own system to
have the program communicate to other programs.
You can read more on exit codes at
[Link]

You can also set the [Link] property:

[Link] = 1

and when the program ends, [Link] will return that exit code.

A program will gracefully exit when all the processing is done.

Many times with [Link] we start servers, like this HTTP server:

const express = require('express')

const app = express()

[Link]('/', (req, res) => {

[Link]('Hi!')

})

[Link](3000, () => [Link]('Server ready'))

Express is a framework that uses the http module under the hood,
[Link]() returns an instance of http. You would use
[Link] if you needed to serve your app using HTTPS, as
[Link] only uses the http module.
This program is never going to end. If you call [Link]() , any
currently pending or running request is going to be aborted. This is not nice.

It is better to allow running request to complete before terminating. In this

case you need to send the command a SIGTERM signal, and handle that
with the process signal handler:

Note: process does not require a "require", it's automatically

available.

const express = require('express')

const app = express()

[Link]('/', (req, res) => {

[Link]('Hi!')

})

const server = [Link](3000, () => [Link]('Server

ready'))

[Link]('SIGTERM', () => {

[Link](() => {

[Link]('Process terminated')

})

})
 What are signals? Signals are a POSIX intercommunication system: a
notification sent to a process in order to notify it of an event that
occurred.

SIGKILL is the signal that tells a process to immediately terminate, and

would ideally act like [Link]() .

SIGTERM is the signal that tells a process to gracefully terminate. It is the

signal that's sent from process managers like upstart or supervisord

and many others.

You can send this signal from inside the program, in another function:

[Link]([Link], 'SIGTERM')

Or from another [Link] running program, or any other app running in your
system that knows the PID of the process you want to terminate.
9. How to read environment variables
from [Link]
The process core module of [Link] provides the env property which
hosts all the environment variables that were set at the moment the process
was started.

The below code runs [Link] and set USER_ID and USER_KEY .

USER_ID=239482 USER_KEY=foobar node [Link]

That will pass the user USER_ID as 239482 and the USER_KEY as foobar.
This is suitable for testing, however for production, you will probably be
configuring some bash scripts to export variables.

Note: process does not require a "require", it's automatically

available.

Here is an example that accesses the USER_ID and USER_KEY

environment variables, which we set in above code.

[Link].USER_ID // "239482"

[Link].USER_KEY // "foobar"

In the same way you can access any custom environment variable you set.
If you have multiple environment variables in your node project, you can
also create an .env file in the root directory of your project, and then use
the dotenv package to load them during runtime.

# .env file

USER_ID="239482"

USER_KEY="foobar"

NODE_ENV="development"

In your js file

require('dotenv').config()

[Link].USER_ID // "239482"

[Link].USER_KEY // "foobar"

[Link].NODE_ENV // "development"

You can also run your js file with node -r dotenv/config [Link]

command if you don't want to import the package in your code.

10. Where to host a [Link] app
Here is a non-exhaustive list of the options you can explore when you want
to deploy your app and make it publicly accessible.

I will list the options from simplest and constrained to more complex and
powerful.

10.1. Simplest option ever: local tunnel

Even if you have a dynamic IP, or you're under a NAT, you can deploy your
app and serve the requests right from your computer using a local tunnel.

This option is suited for some quick testing, demo a product or sharing of
an app with a very small group of people.

A very nice tool for this, available on all platforms, is ngrok.

Using it, you can just type ngrok PORT and the PORT you want is exposed
to the internet. You will get a [Link] domain, but with a paid subscription
you can get a custom URL as well as more security options (remember that
you are opening your machine to the public Internet).

Another service you can use is [Link]

10.2. Zero configuration deployments

10.2.1. Glitch
Glitch is a playground and a way to build your apps faster than ever, and
see them live on their own [Link] subdomain. You cannot currently
have a a custom domain, and there are a few restrictions in place, but it's
really great to prototype. It looks fun (and this is a plus), and it's not a
dumbed down environment - you get all the power of [Link], a CDN,
secure storage for credentials, GitHub import/export and much more.

Provided by the company behind FogBugz and Trello (and co-creators of

Stack Overflow).

I use it a lot for demo purposes.

10.2.2. Codepen
Codepen is an amazing platform and community. You can create a project
with multiple files, and deploy it with a custom domain.

10.3. Serverless
A way to publish your apps, and have no server at all to manage, is
Serverless. Serverless is a paradigm where you publish your apps as
functions, and they respond on a network endpoint (also called FAAS -
Functions As A Service).
To very popular solutions are

Serverless Framework
Standard Library

They both provide an abstraction layer to publishing on AWS Lambda and

other FAAS solutions based on Azure or the Google Cloud offering.

10.4. PAAS
PAAS stands for Platform As A Service. These platforms take away a lot of
things you should otherwise worry about when deploying your application.

10.4.1. Zeit Now

Zeit is now called Vercel

Zeit is an interesting option. You just type now in your terminal, and it
takes care of deploying your application. There is a free version with
limitations, and the paid version is more powerful. You forget that there's a
server, you just deploy the app.

10.4.2. Nanobox
Nanobox

10.4.3. Heroku
Heroku is an amazing platform.
This is a great article on getting started with [Link] on Heroku.

10.4.4. Microsoft Azure

Azure is the Microsoft Cloud offering.

Check out how to create a [Link] web app in Azure.

10.4.5. Google Cloud Platform

Google Cloud is an amazing structure for your apps.

They have a good [Link] Documentation Section

10.5. Virtual Private Server

In this section you find the usual suspects, ordered from more user friendly
to less user friendly:

Digital Ocean
Linode
Amazon Web Services, in particular I mention Amazon Elastic
Beanstalk as it abstracts away a little bit the complexity of AWS.

Since they provide an empty Linux machine on which you can work, there
is no specific tutorial for these.

There are lots more options in the VPS category, those are just the ones I
used and I would recommend.
10.6. Bare metal
Another solution is to get a bare metal server, install a Linux distribution,
connect it to the internet (or rent one monthly, like you can do using the
Vultr Bare Metal service)
11. How to use the [Link] REPL
The node command is the one we use to run our [Link] scripts:

node [Link]

If we run the node command without any script to execute or without any
arguments, we start a REPL session:

node

Note: REPL stands for Read Evaluate Print Loop, and it is a

programming language environment (basically a console window) that
takes single expression as user input and returns the result back to the
console after execution. The REPL session provides a convenient way
to quickly test simple JavaScript code.

If you try it now in your terminal, this is what happens:

❯ node

>

The command stays in idle mode and waits for us to enter something.
 Tip: if you are unsure how to open your terminal, google "How to open
terminal on your-operating-system".

The REPL is waiting for us to enter some JavaScript code, to be more

precise.

Start simple and enter

> [Link]('test')

test

undefined

>

The first value, test , is the output we told the console to print, then we
get undefined which is the return value of running [Link]() .
Node read this line of code, evaluated it, printed the result, and then went
back to waiting for more lines of code. Node will loop through these three
steps for every piece of code we execute in the REPL until we exit the
session. That is where the REPL got its name.

Node automatically prints the result of any line of JavaScript code without
the need to instruct it to do so. For example, type in the following line and
press enter:

> 5 === '5'

false

>
Note the difference in the outputs of the above two lines. The Node REPL
printed undefined after executed [Link]() , while on the other
hand, it just printed the result of 5 === '5' . You need to keep in mind that
the former is just a statement in JavaScript, and the latter is an expression.

In some cases, the code you want to test might need multiple lines. For
example, say you want to define a function that generates a random number,
in the REPL session type in the following line and press enter:

function generateRandom() {

...

The Node REPL is smart enough to determine that you are not done writing
your code yet, and it will go into a multi-line mode for you to type in more
code. Now finish your function definition and press enter:

function generateRandom() {

...return [Link]()

undefined

Node will get out of the multi-line mode, and print undefined since there
is no value returned. This multi-line mode is limited. Node offers a more
featured editor right inside the REPL. We discuss it below under Dot
commands.
11.1. Use the tab to autocomplete
The cool thing about the REPL is that it's interactive.

As you write your code, if you press the tab key the REPL will try to
autocomplete what you wrote to match a variable you already defined or a
predefined one.

11.2. Exploring JavaScript objects

Try entering the name of a JavaScript class, like Number , add a dot and
press tab .

The REPL will print all the properties and methods you can access on that
class:
11.3. Explore global objects
You can inspect the globals you have access to by typing global. and
pressing tab :

11.4. The _ special variable

If after some code you type _ , that is going to print the result of the last
operation.
11.5. The Up arrow key
If you press the up arrow key, you will get access to the history of the
previous lines of code executed in the current, and even previous REPL
sessions.

11.6. Dot commands

The REPL has some special commands, all starting with a dot . . They are

.help : shows the dot commands help

.editor : enables editor mode, to write multiline JavaScript code
with ease. Once you are in this mode, enter ctrl-D to run the code you
wrote.
.break : when inputting a multi-line expression, entering the .break
command will abort further input. Same as pressing ctrl-C.
.clear : resets the REPL context to an empty object and clears any
multi-line expression currently being input.
.load : loads a JavaScript file, relative to the current working
directory
.save : saves all you entered in the REPL session to a file (specify
the filename)
.exit : exits the repl (same as pressing ctrl-C two times)

The REPL knows when you are typing a multi-line statement without the
need to invoke .editor .

For example if you start typing an iteration like this:

 [1, 2, 3].forEach(num => {

and you press enter , the REPL will go to a new line that starts with 3
dots, indicating you can now continue to work on that block.

... [Link](num)

... })

If you type .break at the end of a line, the multiline mode will stop and
the statement will not be executed.

11.7. Run REPL from JavaScript file

We can import the REPL in a JavaScript file using repl .

const repl = require('repl')

Using the repl variable we can perform various operations. To start the
REPL command prompt, type in the following line

[Link]()

Run the file in the command line.

 node [Link]

> const n = 10

You can pass a string which shows when the REPL starts. The default is '> '
(with a trailing space), but we can define custom prompt.

// a Unix style prompt

const local = [Link]('$ ')

You can display a message while exiting the REPL

[Link]('exit', () => {

[Link]('exiting repl')

[Link]()

})
12. Node, accept arguments from the
command line
You can pass any number of arguments when invoking a [Link]
application using

node [Link]

Arguments can be standalone or have a key and a value.

For example:

node [Link] joe

or

node [Link] name=joe

This changes how you will retrieve this value in the [Link] code.

The way you retrieve it is using the process object built into [Link].

It exposes an argv property, which is an array that contains all the

command line invocation arguments.

The first element is the full path of the node command.

The second element is the full path of the file being executed.

All the additional arguments are present from the third position going
forward.

You can iterate over all the arguments (including the node path and the file
path) using a loop:

[Link]((val, index) => {

[Link](`${index}: ${val}`)

})

You can get only the additional arguments by creating a new array that
excludes the first 2 params:

const args = [Link](2)

If you have one argument without an index name, like this:

node [Link] joe

you can access it using

const args = [Link](2)

args[0]
In this case:

node [Link] name=joe

args[0] is name=joe , and you need to parse it. The best way to do so is
by using the minimist library, which helps dealing with arguments:

const args = require('minimist')([Link](2))

[Link] // joe

Install the required minimist package using npm (lesson about the
package manager comes later on).

npm install minimist

This time you need to use double dashes before each argument name:

node [Link] --name=joe

13. Output to the command line using
Node
13.1. Basic output using the console module
[Link] provides a console module which provides tons of very useful
ways to interact with the command line.

It is basically the same as the console object you find in the browser.

The most basic and most used method is [Link]() , which prints the
string you pass to it to the console.

If you pass an object, it will render it as a string.

You can pass multiple variables to [Link] , for example:

const x = 'x'

const y = 'y'

[Link](x, y)

and [Link] will print both.

We can also format pretty phrases by passing variables and a format

specifier.

For example:
 [Link]('My %s has %d ears', 'cat', 2)

%s format a variable as a string

%d format a variable as a number
%i format a variable as its integer part only
%o format a variable as an object

Example:

[Link]('%o', Number)

13.2. Clear the console

[Link]() clears the console (the behavior might depend on the
console used)

13.3. Counting elements

[Link]() is a handy method.

Take this code:

 const x = 1

const y = 2

const z = 3

[Link](

'The value of x is ' + x + ' and has been checked .. how many

times?'

[Link](

'The value of x is ' + x + ' and has been checked .. how many

times?'

[Link](

'The value of y is ' + y + ' and has been checked .. how many

times?'

What happens is that [Link]() will count the number of times a

string is printed, and print the count next to it:

You can just count apples and oranges:

 const oranges = ['orange', 'orange']

const apples = ['just one apple']

[Link]((fruit) => {

[Link](fruit)

})

[Link]((fruit) => {

[Link](fruit)

})

13.4. Reset counting

The [Link]() method resets counter used with [Link]().

We will use the apples and orange example to demonstrate this.

 const oranges = ['orange', 'orange']

const apples = ['just one apple']

[Link]((fruit) => {

[Link](fruit)

})

[Link]((fruit) => {

[Link](fruit)

})

[Link]('orange')

[Link]((fruit) => {

[Link](fruit)

})

Notice how the call to [Link]('orange') resets the value

counter to zero.

13.5. Print the stack trace

There might be cases where it's useful to print the call stack trace of a
function, maybe to answer the question how did you reach that part of the
code?

You can do so using [Link]() :

 const function2 = () => [Link]()

const function1 = () => function2()

function1()

This will print the stack trace. This is what's printed if we try this in the
[Link] REPL:

Trace

at function2 (repl:1:33)

at function1 (repl:1:25)

at repl:1:1

at [Link] ([Link]:33)

at [Link] ([Link]:29)

at bound ([Link]:14)

at [Link] [as eval] ([Link]:12)

at [Link] ([Link]:10)

at emitOne ([Link]:20)

at [Link] ([Link]:7)

13.6. Calculate the time spent

You can easily calculate how much time a function takes to run, using
time() and timeEnd()
 const doSomething = () => [Link]('test')

const measureDoingSomething = () => {

[Link]('doSomething()')

// do something, and measure the time it takes

doSomething()

[Link]('doSomething()')

measureDoingSomething()

13.7. stdout and stderr

As we saw [Link] is great for printing messages in the Console. This is
what's called the standard output, or stdout .

[Link] prints to the stderr stream.

It will not appear in the console, but it will appear in the error log.

13.8. Color the output

You can color the output of your text in the console by using escape
sequences. An escape sequence is a set of characters that identifies a color.

Example:

[Link]('\x1b[33m%s\x1b[0m', 'hi!')
You can try that in the [Link] REPL, and it will print hi! in yellow.

However, this is the low-level way to do this. The simplest way to go about
coloring the console output is by using a library. Chalk is such a library, and
in addition to coloring it also helps with other styling facilities, like making
text bold, italic or underlined.

You install it with npm install chalk@4 , then you can use it:

const chalk = require('chalk')

[Link]([Link]('hi!'))

Using [Link] is much more convenient than trying to remember

the escape codes, and the code is much more readable.

Check the project link posted above for more usage examples.

13.9. Create a progress bar

Progress is an awesome package to create a progress bar in the console.
Install it using npm install progress

This snippet creates a 10-step progress bar, and every 100ms one step is
completed. When the bar completes we clear the interval:
const ProgressBar = require('progress')

const bar = new ProgressBar(':bar', { total: 10 })

const timer = setInterval(() => {

[Link]()

if ([Link]) {

clearInterval(timer)

}, 100)
14. Accept input from the command
line in Node
[Link] has a built-in module system.

A [Link] file can import functionality exposed by other [Link] files.

When you want to import something you use

const library = require('./library')

to import the functionality exposed in the [Link] file that resides in

the current file folder.

In this file, functionality must be exposed before it can be imported by other

files.

Any other object or variable defined in the file by default is private and not
exposed to the outer world.

This is what the [Link] API offered by the module system

allows us to do.

When you assign an object or a function as a new exports property, that

is the thing that's being exposed, and as such, it can be imported in other
parts of your app, or in other apps as well.

You can do so in 2 ways.

The first is to assign an object to [Link] , which is an object
provided out of the box by the module system, and this will make your file
export just that object:

// [Link]

const car = {

brand: 'Ford',

model: 'Fiesta',

[Link] = car

// [Link]

const car = require('./car')

The second way is to add the exported object as a property of exports .

This way allows you to export multiple objects, functions or data:

const car = {

brand: 'Ford',

model: 'Fiesta',

[Link] = car
or directly

[Link] = {

brand: 'Ford',

model: 'Fiesta',

And in the other file, you'll use it by referencing a property of your import:

const items = require('./car')

const { car } = items

or you can use a destructuring assignment:

const { car } = require('./car')

What's the difference between [Link] and exports ?

The first exposes the object it points to. The latter exposes the properties of
the object it points to.

require will always return the object that [Link] points to.
 // [Link]

[Link] = {

brand: 'Ford',

model: 'Fiesta',

[Link] = {

brand: 'Tesla',

model: 'Model S',

// [Link]

const tesla = require('./car')

const ford = require('./car').car

[Link](tesla, ford)

This will print { brand: 'Tesla', model: 'Model S' } undefined since
the require function's return value has been updated to the object that
[Link] points to, so the property that exports added can't be
accessed.
15. An introduction to the npm
package manager
15.1. Introduction to npm
npm is the standard package manager for [Link].

In January 2017 over 350000 packages were reported being listed in the
npm registry, making it the biggest single language code repository on
Earth, and you can be sure there is a package for (almost!) everything.

It started as a way to download and manage dependencies of [Link]

packages, but it has since become a tool used also in frontend JavaScript.

There are many things that npm does.

Yarn and pnpm are alternatives to npm cli. You can check them out as
well.

15.2. Downloads
npm manages downloads of dependencies of your project.

15.2.1. Installing all dependencies

If a project has a [Link] file, by running
 npm install

it will install everything the project needs, in the node_modules folder,

creating it if it's not existing already.

15.2.2. Installing a single package

You can also install a specific package by running

npm install <package-name>

Furthermore, since npm 5, this command adds <package-name> to the

[Link] file dependencies. Before version 5, you needed to add the
flag --save .

Often you'll see more flags added to this command:

-D or --save-dev installs and adds the entry to the [Link]

file devDependencies
--no-save installs but does not add the entry to the [Link]

file dependencies
--save-optional installs and adds the entry to the [Link]

file optionalDependencies
--no-optional will prevent optional dependencies from being
installed

Shorthands of the flags can also be used:

 -S: --save
-D: --save-dev
-O: --save-optional

The difference between devDependencies and dependencies is that the

former contains development tools, like a testing library, while the latter is
bundled with the app in production.

As for the optionalDependencies the difference is that build failure of the

dependency will not cause installation to fail. But it is your program's
responsibility to handle the lack of the dependency. Read more about
optional dependencies.

15.2.3. Updating packages

Updating is also made easy, by running

npm update

npm will check all packages for a newer version that satisfies your
versioning constraints.

You can specify a single package to update as well:

npm update <package-name>

15.3. Versioning
In addition to plain downloads, npm also manages versioning, so you can
specify any specific version of a package, or require a version higher or
lower than what you need.

Many times you'll find that a library is only compatible with a major release
of another library.

Or a bug in the latest release of a lib, still unfixed, is causing an issue.

Specifying an explicit version of a library also helps to keep everyone on

the same exact version of a package, so that the whole team runs the same
version until the [Link] file is updated.

In all those cases, versioning helps a lot, and npm follows the semantic
versioning (semver) standard.

15.4. Running Tasks

The [Link] file supports a format for specifying command line tasks
that can be run by using

npm run <task-name>

For example:
 {

"scripts": {

"start-dev": "node lib/server-development",

"start": "node lib/server-production"

It's very common to use this feature to run Webpack:

"scripts": {

"watch": "webpack --watch --progress --colors --config

[Link]",

"dev": "webpack --progress --colors --config

[Link]",

"prod": "NODE_ENV=production webpack -p --config

[Link]"

So instead of typing those long commands, which are easy to forget or

mistype, you can run
$ npm run watch

$ npm run dev

$ npm run prod

16. Where does npm install the
packages?
When you install a package using npm you can perform 2 types of
installation:

a local install
a global install

By default, when you type an npm install command, like:

npm install lodash

the package is installed in the current file tree, under the node_modules

subfolder.

As this happens, npm also adds the lodash entry in the dependencies

property of the [Link] file present in the current folder.

A global installation is performed using the -g flag:

npm install -g lodash

When this happens, npm won't install the package under the local folder,
but instead, it will use a global location.
Where, exactly?

The npm root -g command will tell you where that exact location is on
your machine.

On macOS or Linux this location could be /usr/local/lib/node_modules .

On Windows it could be
C:\Users\YOU\AppData\Roaming\npm\node_modules

If you use nvm to manage [Link] versions, however, that location would
differ.

For example, if your username is 'joe' and you use nvm , then packages
location will show as
/Users/joe/.nvm/versions/node/v8.9.0/lib/node_modules .
17. How to use or execute a package
installed using npm
When you install a package into your node_modules folder using npm ,
or also globally, how do you use it in your [Link] code?

Say you install lodash , the popular JavaScript utility library, using

npm install lodash

This is going to install the package in the local node_modules folder.

To use it in your code, you just need to import it into your program using
require :

const _ = require('lodash')

What if your package is an executable?

In this case, it will put the executable file under the node_modules/.bin/

folder.

One easy way to demonstrate this is cowsay.

The cowsay package provides a command line program that can be

executed to make a cow say something (and other animals as well 🦊).
When you install the package using npm install cowsay , it will install
itself and a few dependencies in the node_modules folder:

There is a hidden .bin folder, which contains symbolic links to the

cowsay binaries:

How do you execute those?

You can of course type ./node_modules/.bin/cowsay to run it, and it
works, but npx , included in the recent versions of npm (since 5.2), is a
much better option. You just run:

npx cowsay take me out of here

and npx will find the executable location.

18. The [Link] guide
If you work with JavaScript, or you've ever interacted with a JavaScript
project, [Link] or a frontend project, you surely met the [Link]

file.

What's that for? What should you know about it, and what are some of the
cool things you can do with it?

The [Link] file is kind of a manifest for your project. It can do a

lot of things, completely unrelated. It's a central repository of configuration
for tools, for example. It's also where npm and yarn store the names and
versions for all the installed packages.

18.1. The file structure

Here's an example [Link] file:

{}

It's empty! There are no fixed requirements of what should be in a

[Link] file, for an application. The only requirement is that it
respects the JSON format, otherwise it cannot be read by programs that try
to access its properties programmatically.
If you're building a [Link] package that you want to distribute over npm

things change radically, and you must have a set of properties that will help
other people use it. We'll see more about this later on.

This is another [Link]:

"name": "test-project"

It defines a name property, which tells the name of the app, or package,
that's contained in the same folder where this file lives.

Here's a much more complex example, which was extracted from a sample
[Link] application:
{

"name": "test-project",

"version": "1.0.0",

"description": "A [Link] project",

"main": "src/[Link]",

"private": true,

"scripts": {

"dev": "webpack-dev-server --inline --progress --config

build/[Link]",

"start": "npm run dev",

"unit": "jest --config test/unit/[Link] --coverage",

"test": "npm run unit",

"lint": "eslint --ext .js,.vue src test/unit",

"build": "node build/[Link]"

},

"dependencies": {

"vue": "^2.5.2"

},

"devDependencies": {

"autoprefixer": "^7.1.2",

"babel-core": "^6.22.1",

"babel-eslint": "^8.2.1",

"babel-helper-vue-jsx-merge-props": "^2.0.3",

"babel-jest": "^21.0.2",

"babel-loader": "^7.1.1",

"babel-plugin-dynamic-import-node": "^1.2.0",
 "babel-plugin-syntax-jsx": "^6.18.0",

"babel-plugin-transform-es2015-modules-commonjs":

"^6.26.0",

"babel-plugin-transform-runtime": "^6.22.0",

"babel-plugin-transform-vue-jsx": "^3.5.0",

"babel-preset-env": "^1.3.2",

"babel-preset-stage-2": "^6.22.0",

"chalk": "^2.0.1",

"copy-webpack-plugin": "^4.0.1",

"css-loader": "^0.28.0",

"eslint": "^4.15.0",

"eslint-config-airbnb-base": "^11.3.0",

"eslint-friendly-formatter": "^3.0.0",

"eslint-import-resolver-webpack": "^0.8.3",

"eslint-loader": "^1.7.1",

"eslint-plugin-import": "^2.7.0",

"eslint-plugin-vue": "^4.0.0",

"extract-text-webpack-plugin": "^3.0.0",

"file-loader": "^1.1.4",

"friendly-errors-webpack-plugin": "^1.6.1",

"html-webpack-plugin": "^2.30.1",

"jest": "^22.0.4",

"jest-serializer-vue": "^0.3.0",

"node-notifier": "^5.1.2",

"optimize-css-assets-webpack-plugin": "^3.2.0",

"ora": "^1.2.0",

"portfinder": "^1.0.13",
 "postcss-import": "^11.0.0",

"postcss-loader": "^2.0.8",

"postcss-url": "^7.2.1",

"rimraf": "^2.6.0",

"semver": "^5.3.0",

"shelljs": "^0.7.6",

"uglifyjs-webpack-plugin": "^1.1.1",

"url-loader": "^0.5.8",

"vue-jest": "^1.0.2",

"vue-loader": "^13.3.0",

"vue-style-loader": "^3.0.1",

"vue-template-compiler": "^2.5.2",

"webpack": "^3.6.0",

"webpack-bundle-analyzer": "^2.9.0",

"webpack-dev-server": "^2.9.1",

"webpack-merge": "^4.1.0"

},

"engines": {

"node": ">= 6.0.0",

"npm": ">= 3.0.0"

},

"browserslist": ["> 1%", "last 2 versions", "not ie <= 8"]

there are lots of things going on here:

 version indicates the current version
name sets the application/package name
description is a brief description of the app/package
main sets the entry point for the application
private if set to true prevents the app/package to be accidentally
published on npm

scripts defines a set of node scripts you can run

dependencies sets a list of npm packages installed as dependencies
devDependencies sets a list of npm packages installed as
development dependencies
engines sets which versions of [Link] this package/app works on
browserslist is used to tell which browsers (and their versions) you
want to support

All those properties are used by either npm or other tools that we can use.

18.2. Properties breakdown

This section describes the properties you can use in detail. We refer to
"package" but the same thing applies to local applications which you do not
use as packages.

Most of those properties are only used on [Link] others

by scripts that interact with your code, like npm or others.

18.2.1. name
Sets the package name.
Example:

"name": "test-project"

The name must be less than 214 characters, must not have spaces, it can
only contain lowercase letters, hyphens ( - ) or underscores ( _ ).

This is because when a package is published on npm , it gets its own URL
based on this property.

If you published this package publicly on GitHub, a good value for this
property is the GitHub repository name.

18.2.2. author
Lists the package author name

Example:

"author": "Joe <joe@[Link]> ([Link]

Can also be used with this format:

 {

"author": {

"name": "Joe",

"email": "joe@[Link]",

"url": "[Link]

18.2.3. contributors
As well as the author, the project can have one or more contributors. This
property is an array that lists them.

Example:

"contributors": ["Joe <joe@[Link]>

([Link]

Can also be used with this format:

 {

"contributors": [

"name": "Joe",

"email": "joe@[Link]",

"url": "[Link]

18.2.4. bugs
Links to the package issue tracker, most likely a GitHub issues page

Example:

"bugs": "[Link]

18.2.5. homepage
Sets the package homepage

Example:
 {

"homepage": "[Link]

18.2.6. version
Indicates the current version of the package.

Example:

"version": "1.0.0"

This property follows the semantic versioning (semver) notation for

versions, which means the version is always expressed with 3 numbers:
x.x.x .

The first number is the major version, the second the minor version and the
third is the patch version.

There is a meaning in these numbers: a release that only fixes bugs is a

patch release, a release that introduces backward-compatible changes is a
minor release, a major release can have breaking changes.

18.2.7. license
Indicates the license of the package.
Example:

"license": "MIT"

18.2.8. keywords
This property contains an array of keywords that associate with what your
package does.

Example:

"keywords": [

"email",

"machine learning",

"ai"

This helps people find your package when navigating similar packages, or
when browsing the [Link] website.

18.2.9. description
This property contains a brief description of the package

Example:
 "description": "A package to work with strings"

This is especially useful if you decide to publish your package to npm so

that people can find out what the package is about.

18.2.10. repository
This property specifies where this package repository is located.

Example:

"repository": "github:whatever/testing",

Notice the github prefix. There are other popular services baked in:

"repository": "gitlab:whatever/testing",

"repository": "bitbucket:whatever/testing",

You can explicitly set the version control system:

 "repository": {

"type": "git",

"url": "[Link]

You can use different version control systems:

"repository": {

"type": "svn",

"url": "..."

18.2.11. main
Sets the entry point for the package.

When you import this package in an application, that's where the

application will search for the module exports.

Example:

"main": "src/[Link]"
18.2.12. private
if set to true prevents the app/package to be accidentally published on
npm

Example:

"private": true

18.2.13. scripts
Defines a set of node scripts you can run

Example:

"scripts": {

"dev": "webpack-dev-server --inline --progress --config

build/[Link]",

"start": "npm run dev",

"unit": "jest --config test/unit/[Link] --coverage",

"test": "npm run unit",

"lint": "eslint --ext .js,.vue src test/unit",

"build": "node build/[Link]"

}
These scripts are command line applications. You can run them by calling
npm run XXXX or yarn XXXX , where XXXX is the command name.
Example: npm run dev .

You can use any name you want for a command, and scripts can do literally
anything you want.

18.2.14. dependencies
Sets a list of npm packages installed as dependencies.

When you install a package using npm or yarn:

npm install <PACKAGENAME>

yarn add <PACKAGENAME>

that package is automatically inserted in this list.

Example:

"dependencies": {

"vue": "^2.5.2"

18.2.15. devDependencies
Sets a list of npm packages installed as development dependencies.
They differ from dependencies because they are meant to be installed
only on a development machine, not needed to run the code in production.

When you install a package using npm or yarn:

npm install -D <PACKAGENAME>

yarn add --dev <PACKAGENAME>

that package is automatically inserted in this list.

Example:

"devDependencies": {

"autoprefixer": "^7.1.2",

"babel-core": "^6.22.1"

18.2.16. engines
Sets which versions of [Link] and other commands this package/app work
on

Example:
 "engines": {

"node": ">= 6.0.0",

"npm": ">= 3.0.0",

"yarn": "^0.13.0"

18.2.17. browserslist
Is used to tell which browsers (and their versions) you want to support. It's
referenced by Babel, Autoprefixer, and other tools, to only add the polyfills
and fallbacks needed to the browsers you target.

Example:

"browserslist": [

"> 1%",

"last 2 versions",

"not ie <= 8"

This configuration means you want to support the last 2 major versions of
all browsers with at least 1% of usage (from the [Link] stats), except
IE8 and lower.

(see more)
18.2.18. Command-specific properties
The [Link] file can also host command-specific configuration, for
example for Babel, ESLint, and more.

Each has a specific property, like eslintConfig , babel and others.

Those are command-specific, and you can find how to use those in the
respective command/project documentation.

18.3. Package versions

You have seen in the description above version numbers like these:
~3.0.0 or ^0.13.0 . What do they mean, and which other version
specifiers can you use?

That symbol specifies which updates your package accepts, from that
dependency.

Given that using semver (semantic versioning) all versions have 3 digits,
the first being the major release, the second the minor release and the third
is the patch release, you have these "Rules".

You can combine most of the versions in ranges, like this: 1.0.0 ||

>=1.1.0 <1.2.0 , to either use 1.0.0 or one release from 1.1.0 up, but lower
than 1.2.0.
19. The [Link] file
In version 5, npm introduced the [Link] file.

What's that? You probably know about the [Link] file, which is
much more common and has been around for much longer.

The goal of [Link] file is to keep track of the exact version of

every package that is installed so that a product is 100% reproducible in the
same way even if packages are updated by their maintainers.

This solves a very specific problem that [Link] left unsolved. In

[Link] you can set which versions you want to upgrade to (patch or
minor), using the semver notation, for example:

if you write ~0.13.0 , you want to only update patch releases:

0.13.1 is ok, but 0.14.0 is not.
if you write ^0.13.0 , you want to get updates that do not change the
leftmost non-zero number: 0.13.1 , 0.13.2 and so on. If you write
^1.13.0 , you will get patch and minor releases: 1.13.1 , 1.14.0

and so on up to 2.0.0 but not 2.0.0 .

if you write 0.13.0 , that is the exact version that will be used,
always

You don't commit to Git your node_modules folder, which is generally

huge, and when you try to replicate the project on another machine by using
the npm install command, if you specified the ~ syntax and a patch
release of a package has been released, that one is going to be installed.
Same for ^ and minor releases.

If you specify exact versions, like 0.13.0 in the example, you are not
affected by this problem.

It could be you, or another person trying to initialize the project on the other
side of the world by running npm install .

So your original project and the newly initialized project are actually
different. Even if a patch or minor release should not introduce breaking
changes, we all know bugs can (and so, they will) slide in.

The [Link] sets your currently installed version of each

package in stone, and npm will use those exact versions when running
npm ci .

This concept is not new, and other programming languages package

managers (like Composer in PHP) have used a similar system for years.

The [Link] file needs to be committed to your Git repository,

so it can be fetched by other people, if the project is public or you have
collaborators, or if you use Git as a source for deployments.

The dependencies versions will be updated in the [Link] file

when you run npm update .
19.1. An example
This is an example structure of a [Link] file we get when we
run npm install cowsay in an empty folder:
{

"requires": true,

"lockfileVersion": 1,

"dependencies": {

"ansi-regex": {

"version": "3.0.0",

"resolved": "[Link]

regex/-/ansi-regex-3.

[Link]",

"integrity": "sha1-7QMXwyIGT3lGbAKWa922Bas32Zg="

},

"cowsay": {

"version": "1.3.1",

"resolved": "[Link]

[Link]"

"integrity": "sha512-

3PVFe6FePVtPj1HTeLin9v8WyLl+VmM1l1H/5P+BTTDkM

Ajufp+0F9eLjzRnOHzVAYeIYFF5po5NjRrgefnRMQ==",

"requires": {

"get-stdin": "^5.0.1",

"optimist": "~0.6.1",

"string-width": "~2.1.1",

"strip-eof": "^1.0.0"

},
 "get-stdin": {

"version": "5.0.1",

"resolved": "[Link]

stdin-5.0.

[Link]",

"integrity": "sha1-Ei4WFZHiH/TFJTAwVpPyDmOTo5g="

},

"is-fullwidth-code-point": {

"version": "2.0.0",

"resolved": "[Link]

code-point/-/

[Link]",

"integrity": "sha1-o7MKXE8ZkYMWeqq5O+764937ZU8="

},

"minimist": {

"version": "0.0.10",

"resolved":

"[Link]

.tgz",

"integrity": "sha1-3j+YVD2/lggr5IrRoMfNqDYwHc8="

},

"optimist": {

"version": "0.6.1",

"resolved":

"[Link]

"integrity": "sha1-2j6nRob6IaGaERwybpDrFaAZZoY=",
 "requires": {

"minimist": "~0.0.1",

"wordwrap": "~0.0.2"

},

"string-width": {

"version": "2.1.1",

"resolved": "[Link]

width/-/[Link]",

"integrity": "sha512-

nOqH59deCq9SRHlxq1Aw85Jnt4w6KvLKqWVik6oA9ZklXLNIOlqg4F2yrT1MVaT

jAqvVwdfeZ7w7aCvJD7ugkw==",

"requires": {

"is-fullwidth-code-point": "^2.0.0",

"strip-ansi": "^4.0.0"

},

"strip-ansi": {

"version": "4.0.0",

"resolved": "[Link]

ansi/-/[Link]",

"integrity": "sha1-qEeQIusaw2iocTibY1JixQXuNo8=",

"requires": {

"ansi-regex": "^3.0.0"

},

"strip-eof": {
 "version": "1.0.0",

"resolved": "[Link]

eof/-/[Link]",

"integrity": "sha1-u0P/VZim6wXYm1n80SnJgzE2Br8="

},

"wordwrap": {

"version": "0.0.3",

"resolved":

"[Link]

"integrity": "sha1-o9XabNXAvAAI03I0u68b7WMFkQc="

We installed cowsay , which depends on

get-stdin

optimist

string-width

strip-eof

In turn, those packages require other packages, as we can see from the
requires property that some have:

ansi-regex

is-fullwidth-code-point

minimist
 wordwrap

strip-eof

They are added in alphabetical order into the file, and each one has a
version field, a resolved field that points to the package location, and
an integrity string that we can use to verify the package.
20. Find the installed version of an
npm package
To see the version of all installed npm packages, including their
dependencies:

npm list

For example:

❯ npm list

/Users/joe/dev/node/cowsay

└─┬ cowsay@1.3.1

├── get-stdin@5.0.1

├─┬ optimist@0.6.1

│ ├── minimist@0.0.10

│ └── wordwrap@0.0.3

├─┬ string-width@2.1.1

│ ├── is-fullwidth-code-point@2.0.0

│ └─┬ strip-ansi@4.0.0

│ └── ansi-regex@3.0.0

└── strip-eof@1.0.0
You can also just open the [Link] file, but this involves some
visual scanning.

npm list -g is the same, but for globally installed packages.

To get only your top-level packages (basically, the ones you told npm to
install and you listed in the [Link] ), run npm list --depth=0 :

❯ npm list --depth=0

/Users/joe/dev/node/cowsay

└── cowsay@1.3.1

You can get the version of a specific package by specifying its name:

❯ npm list cowsay

/Users/joe/dev/node/cowsay

└── cowsay@1.3.1

This also works for dependencies of packages you installed:

❯ npm list minimist

/Users/joe/dev/node/cowsay

└─┬ cowsay@1.3.1

└─┬ optimist@0.6.1

└── minimist@0.0.10
If you want to see what's the latest available version of the package on the
npm repository, run npm view [package_name] version :

❯ npm view cowsay version

1.3.1
21. Install an older version of an npm
package
You can install an old version of an npm package using the @ syntax:

npm install <package>@<version>

Example:

npm install cowsay

installs version 1.3.1 (at the time of writing).

Install version 1.2.0 with:

npm install cowsay@1.2.0

The same can be done with global packages:

npm install -g webpack@4.16.4

You might also be interested in listing all the previous versions of a

package. You can do it with npm view <package> versions :
❯ npm view cowsay versions

[ '1.0.0',

'1.0.1',

'1.0.2',

'1.0.3',

'1.1.0',

'1.1.1',

'1.1.2',

'1.1.3',

'1.1.4',

'1.1.5',

'1.1.6',

'1.1.7',

'1.1.8',

'1.1.9',

'1.2.0',

'1.2.1',

'1.3.0',

'1.3.1' ]
22. Update all the Node dependencies
to their latest version
22.1. How Packages Become Dependencies
When you install a package using npm install <packagename> , the latest
version is downloaded to the node_modules folder. A corresponding entry
is added to [Link] and [Link] in the current folder.

npm determines the dependencies and installs their latest versions as well.

Let's say you install cowsay , a nifty command-line tool that lets you make
a cow say things.

When you run npm install cowsay , this entry is added to the
[Link] file:

"dependencies": {

"cowsay": "^1.3.1"

This is an extract of [Link] (nested dependencies were

removed for clarity):
 {

"requires": true,

"lockfileVersion": 1,

"dependencies": {

"cowsay": {

"version": "1.3.1",

"resolved": "[Link]

[Link]",

"integrity": "sha512-

3PVFe6FePVtPj1HTeLin9v8WyLl+VmM1l1H/5P+BTTDkMAjufp+0F9eLjzRnOHz

VAYeIYFF5po5NjRrgefnRMQ==",

"requires": {

"get-stdin": "^5.0.1",

"optimist": "~0.6.1",

"string-width": "~2.1.1",

"strip-eof": "^1.0.0"

Now those 2 files tell us that we installed version 1.3.1 of cowsay, and
our npm versioning rule for updates is ^1.3.1 . This means npm can
update to patch and minor releases: 1.3.2 , 1.4.0 and so on.
If there is a new minor or patch release and we type npm update , the
installed version is updated, and the [Link] file diligently
filled with the new version.

Since npm version 5.0.0, npm update updates [Link] with newer
minor or patch versions. Use npm update --no-save to prevent modifying
[Link] .

To discover new package releases, use npm outdated .

Here's the list of a few outdated packages in a repository:

Some of those updates are major releases. Running npm update won't
help here. Major releases are never updated in this way because they (by
definition) introduce breaking changes, and npm wants to save you
trouble.

22.2. Update All Packages to the Latest Version

Leveraging npm-check-updates, you can upgrade all [Link]

dependencies to the latest version.

1. Install the npm-check-updates package globally:

npm install -g npm-check-updates

1. Now run npm-check-updates to upgrade all version hints in

[Link] , allowing installation of the new major versions:

ncu -u

1. Finally, run a standard install:

npm install
23. Semantic Versioning using npm
If there's one great thing in [Link] packages, it's that they all agreed on
using Semantic Versioning for their version numbering.

The Semantic Versioning concept is simple: all versions have 3 digits:

x.y.z .

the first digit is the major version

the second digit is the minor version
the third digit is the patch version

When you make a new release, you don't just up a number as you please,
but you have rules:

you up the major version when you make incompatible API changes
you up the minor version when you add functionality in a backward-
compatible manner
you up the patch version when you make backward-compatible bug
fixes

The convention is adopted all across programming languages, and it is very

important that every npm package adheres to it, because the whole system
depends on that.

Why is that so important?

Because npm set some rules we can use in the [Link] file to
choose which versions it can update our packages to, when we run npm

update .

The rules use these symbols:

>

>=

<

<=

||

Let's see those rules in detail:

^ : It will only do updates that do not change the leftmost non-zero

number i.e there can be changes in minor version or patch version but
not in major version. If you write ^13.1.0 , when running npm

update , it can update to 13.2.0 , 13.3.0 even 13.3.1 , 13.3.2

and so on, but not to 14.0.0 or above.

~ : if you write ~0.13.0 when running npm update it can update
to patch releases: 0.13.1 is ok, but 0.14.0 is not.
> : you accept any version higher than the one you specify
>= : you accept any version equal to or higher than the one you
specify
<= : you accept any version equal or lower to the one you specify
 < : you accept any version lower than the one you specify
= : you accept that exact version
- : you accept a range of versions. Example: 2.1.0 - 2.6.2

|| : you combine sets. Example: < 2.1 || > 2.6

You can combine some of those notations, for example use 1.0.0 ||

>=1.1.0 <1.2.0 to either use 1.0.0 or one release from 1.1.0 up, but lower
than 1.2.0.

There are other rules, too:

no symbol: you accept only that specific version you specify ( 1.2.1 )
latest : you want to use the latest version available
24. Uninstalling npm packages with
npm uninstall

To uninstall a package you have previously installed locally (using npm

install <package-name> ), run

npm uninstall <package-name>

from the project root folder (the folder that contains the node_modules

folder). This will update dependencies , devDependencies ,

optionalDependencies , and peerDependencies in both [Link]

and [Link] files.

Use --no-save option if you don't want to update the [Link] and
[Link] files.

If the package is installed globally, you need to add the -g / --global

flag:

npm uninstall -g <package-name>

for example:

npm uninstall -g webpack

and you can run this command from anywhere you want on your system
because, for global packages the current directory doesn't matter.
25. npm global or local packages
The main difference between local and global packages is this:

local packages are installed in the directory where you run npm

install <package-name> , and they are put in the node_modules

folder under this directory

global packages are all put in a single place in your system (exactly
where depends on your setup), regardless of where you run npm

install -g <package-name>

In your code you can only require local packages:

require('package-name')

so when should you install in one way or another?

In general, all packages should be installed locally.

This makes sure you can have dozens of applications in your computer, all
running a different version of each package if needed.

Updating a global package would make all your projects use the new
release, and as you can imagine this might cause nightmares in terms of
maintenance, as some packages might break compatibility with further
dependencies, and so on.
All projects have their own local version of a package, even if this might
appear like a waste of resources, it's minimal compared to the possible
negative consequences.

A package should be installed globally when it provides an executable

command that you run from the shell (CLI), and it's reused across projects.

You can also install executable commands locally and run them using npx,
but some packages are just better installed globally.

Great examples of popular global packages which you might know are

npm

vue-cli

grunt-cli

mocha

react-native-cli

gatsby-cli

forever

nodemon

You probably have some packages installed globally already on your

system. You can see them by running

npm list -g --depth 0

on your command line.

26. npm dependencies and
devDependencies
When you install an npm package using npm install <package-name> ,
you are installing it as a dependency.

The package is automatically listed in the [Link] file, under the

dependencies list (as of npm 5. previously, you had to manually specify
--save ).

When you add the -D flag, or --save-dev , you are installing it as a

development dependency, which adds it to the devDependencies list.

Development dependencies are intended as development-only packages,

that are unneeded in production. For example testing packages, webpack or
Babel.

When you go in production, if you type npm install and the folder
contains a [Link] file, they are installed, as npm assumes this is a
development deploy.

You need to set the --production flag ( npm install --production ) to

avoid installing those development dependencies.
27. The npx Node Package Runner
npx is a very powerful command that's been available in npm starting
version 5.2, released in July 2017.

If you don't want to install npm, you can install npx as a standalone
package

npx lets you run code built with [Link] and published through the npm
registry.

27.1. Easily run local commands

[Link] developers used to publish most of the executable commands as
global packages, in order for them to be in the path and executable
immediately.

This was a pain because you could not really install different versions of the
same command.

Running npx commandname automatically finds the correct reference of the

command inside the node_modules folder of a project, without needing to
know the exact path, and without requiring the package to be installed
globally and in the user's path.
27.2. Installation-less command execution
There is another great feature of npx , which is allowing to run commands
without first installing them.

This is pretty useful, mostly because:

1. you don't need to install anything

2. you can run different versions of the same command, using the syntax
@version

A typical demonstration of using npx is through the cowsay command.

cowsay will print a cow saying what you wrote in the command. For
example:

cowsay "Hello" will print

_______

< Hello >

-------

\ ^__^

\ (oo)\_______

(__)\ )\/\

||----w |

|| ||
This only works if you have the cowsay command globally installed from
npm previously. Otherwise you'll get an error when you try to run the
command.

npx allows you to run that npm command without installing it first. If the
command isn't found, npx will install it into a central cache:

npx cowsay "Hello"

will do the job.

Now, this is a funny useless command. Other scenarios include:

running the vue CLI tool to create new applications and run them:
npx @vue/cli create my-vue-app

creating a new React app using create-react-app : npx create-

react-app my-react-app

and many more.

27.3. Run some code using a different [Link]

version
Use the @ to specify the version, and combine that with the node npm
package:
 npx node@10 -v #v10.18.1

npx node@12 -v #v12.14.1

This helps to avoid tools like nvm or the other [Link] version
management tools.

27.4. Run arbitrary code snippets directly from a

URL
npx does not limit you to the packages published on the npm registry.

You can run code that sits in a GitHub gist, for example:

npx

[Link]

Of course, you need to be careful when running code that you do not
control, as with great power comes great responsibility.
28. The [Link] Event Loop
28.1. Introduction
The Event Loop is one of the most important aspects to understand about
[Link].

Why is this so important? Because it explains how [Link] can be

asynchronous and have non-blocking I/O, and so it explains basically the
"killer feature" of [Link], the thing that made it this successful.

The [Link] JavaScript code runs on a single thread. There is just one thing
happening at a time.

This is a limitation that's actually very helpful, as it simplifies a lot how you
program without worrying about concurrency issues.

You just need to pay attention to how you write your code and avoid
anything that could block the thread, like synchronous network calls or
infinite loops.

In general, in most browsers there is an event loop for every browser tab, to
make every process isolated and avoid a web page with infinite loops or
heavy processing to block your entire browser.

The environment manages multiple concurrent event loops, to handle API

calls for example. Web Workers run in their own event loop as well.
You mainly need to be concerned that your code will run on a single event
loop, and write code with this thing in mind to avoid blocking it.

28.2. Blocking the event loop

Any JavaScript code that takes too long to return back control to the event
loop will block the execution of any JavaScript code in the page, even block
the UI thread, and the user cannot click around, scroll the page, and so on.

Almost all the I/O primitives in JavaScript are non-blocking. Network

requests, filesystem operations, and so on. Being blocking is the exception,
and this is why JavaScript is based so much on callbacks, and more recently
on promises and async/await.

28.3. The call stack

The call stack is a LIFO (Last In, First Out) stack.

The event loop continuously checks the call stack to see if there's any
function that needs to run.

While doing so, it adds any function call it finds in the call stack and
executes each one in order.
You know the error stack trace you might be familiar with, in the debugger
or in the browser console? The browser looks up the function names in the
call stack to inform you which function originates the current call:

28.4. A simple event loop explanation

Let's pick an example:
 const bar = () => [Link]('bar')

const baz = () => [Link]('baz')

const foo = () => {

[Link]('foo')

bar()

baz()

foo()

This code prints

foo

bar

baz

as expected.

When this code runs, first foo() is called. Inside foo() we first call
bar() , then we call baz() .
At this point the call stack looks like this:
The event loop on every iteration looks if there's something in the call
stack, and executes it:
until the call stack is empty.

28.5. Queuing function execution

The above example looks normal, there's nothing special about it:
JavaScript finds things to execute, runs them in order.

Let's see how to defer a function until the stack is clear.

The use case of setTimeout(() => {}, 0) is to call a function, but

execute it once every other function in the code has executed.

Take this example:

const bar = () => [Link]('bar')

const baz = () => [Link]('baz')

const foo = () => {

[Link]('foo')

setTimeout(bar, 0)

baz()

foo()
This code prints, maybe surprisingly: foo
baz

bar

When this code runs, first foo() is called. Inside foo() we first call
setTimeout, passing bar as an argument, and we instruct it to run
immediately as fast as it can, passing 0 as the timer. Then we call baz().

At this point the call stack looks like this:

Here is the execution order for all the functions in our program:
Why is this happening?

28.6. The Message Queue

When setTimeout() is called, the Browser or [Link] starts the timer. Once
the timer expires, in this case immediately as we put 0 as the timeout, the
callback function is put in the Message Queue.

The Message Queue is also where user-initiated events like click or

keyboard events, or fetch responses are queued before your code has the
opportunity to react to them. Or also DOM events like onload .

The loop gives priority to the call stack, and it first processes
everything it finds in the call stack, and once there's nothing in there, it
goes to pick up things in the message queue.

We don't have to wait for functions like setTimeout , fetch or other things
to do their own work, because they are provided by the browser, and they
live on their own threads. For example, if you set the setTimeout timeout
to 2 seconds, you don't have to wait 2 seconds - the wait happens elsewhere.

28.7. ES6 Job Queue

ECMAScript 2015 introduced the concept of the Job Queue, which is used
by Promises (also introduced in ES6/ES2015). It's a way to execute the
result of an async function as soon as possible, rather than being put at the
end of the call stack.
Promises that resolve before the current function ends will be executed right
after the current function.

Similar to a rollercoaster ride at an amusement park: the message queue

puts you at the back of the queue, behind all the other people, where you
will have to wait for your turn, while the job queue is the fastpass ticket that
lets you take another ride right after you finished the previous one.

Example:

const bar = () => [Link]('bar')

const baz = () => [Link]('baz')

const foo = () => {

[Link]('foo')

setTimeout(bar, 0)

new Promise((resolve, reject) =>

resolve('should be right after baz, before bar')

).then((resolve) => [Link](resolve))

baz()

foo()

This prints
 foo

baz

should be right after baz, before bar

bar

That's a big difference between Promises (and Async/await, which is built

on promises) and plain old asynchronous functions through setTimeout()

or other platform APIs.

Finally, here's what the call stack looks like for the example above:
29. Understanding [Link]()
As you try to understand the [Link] event loop, one important part of it is
[Link]() .

Every time the event loop takes a full trip, we call it a tick.

When we pass a function to [Link]() , we instruct the engine

to invoke this function at the end of the current operation, before the next
event loop tick starts: [Link](() => {

// do something

})

The event loop is busy processing the current function code.

When this operation ends, the JS engine runs all the functions passed to
nextTick calls during that operation.

It's the way we can tell the JS engine to process a function asynchronously
(after the current function), but as soon as possible, not queue it.

Calling setTimeout(() => {}, 0) will execute the function at the end of
next tick, much later than when using nextTick() which prioritizes the
call and executes it just before the beginning of the next tick.

Use nextTick() when you want to make sure that in the next event loop
iteration that code is already executed.
30. Understanding setImmediate()
When you want to execute some piece of code asynchronously, but as soon
as possible, one option is to use the setImmediate() function provided by
[Link]: setImmediate(() => {

// run something

})

Any function passed as the setImmediate() argument is a callback that's

executed in the next iteration of the event loop.

How is setImmediate() different from setTimeout(() => {}, 0)

(passing a 0ms timeout), and from [Link]() and

[Link]() ?

A function passed to [Link]() is going to be executed on the

current iteration of the event loop, after the current operation ends. This
means it will always execute before setTimeout and setImmediate .

A setTimeout() callback with a 0ms delay is very similar to

setImmediate() . The execution order will depend on various factors, but
they will be both run in the next iteration of the event loop.

A [Link] callback is added to [Link] queue .A

[Link]() callback is added to promises microtask queue .A
setTimeout , setImmediate callback is added to macrotask queue .
Event loop executes tasks in [Link] queue first, and then
executes promises microtask queue , and then executes macrotask

queue .

Here is an example to show the order between setImmediate() ,

[Link]() and [Link]() : const baz = () =>

[Link]('baz')

const foo = () => [Link]('foo')

const zoo = () => [Link]('zoo')

const start = () => {

[Link]('start')

setImmediate(baz)

new Promise((resolve, reject) => {

resolve('bar')

}).then((resolve) => {

[Link](resolve)

[Link](zoo)

})

[Link](foo)

start()

// start foo bar zoo baz

This code will first call start() , then call foo() in [Link]

queue . After that, it will handle promises microtask queue , which prints
bar and adds zoo() in [Link] queue at the same time.
Then it will call zoo() which has just been added. In the end, the baz()

in macrotask queue is called.

31. Discover JavaScript Timers
31.1. setTimeout()
When writing JavaScript code, you might want to delay the execution of a
function.

This is the job of setTimeout . You specify a callback function to execute

later, and a value expressing how later you want it to run, in milliseconds:
setTimeout(() => {

// runs after 2 seconds

}, 2000)

setTimeout(() => {

// runs after 50 milliseconds

}, 50)

This syntax defines a new function. You can call whatever other function
you want in there, or you can pass an existing function name, and a set of
parameters: const myFunction = (firstParam, secondParam) => {

// do something

// runs after 2 seconds

setTimeout(myFunction, 2000, firstParam, secondParam)

 setTimeout returns the timer id. This is generally not used, but you can
store this id, and clear it if you want to delete this scheduled function
execution: const id = setTimeout(() => {

// should run after 2 seconds

}, 2000)

// I changed my mind

clearTimeout(id)

31.1.1. Zero delay

If you specify the timeout delay to 0 , the callback function will be
executed as soon as possible, but after the current function execution:
setTimeout(() => {

[Link]('after ')

}, 0)

[Link](' before ')

This code will print

before

after

This is especially useful to avoid blocking the CPU on intensive tasks and
let other functions be executed while performing a heavy calculation, by
queuing functions in the scheduler.
 Some browsers (IE and Edge) implement a setImmediate() method
that does this same exact functionality, but it's not standard and
unavailable on other browsers. But it's a standard function in [Link].

31.2. setInterval()
setInterval is a function similar to setTimeout , with a difference:
instead of running the callback function once, it will run it forever, at the
specific time interval you specify (in milliseconds): setInterval(() => {

// runs every 2 seconds

}, 2000)

The function above runs every 2 seconds unless you tell it to stop, using
clearInterval , passing it the interval id that setInterval returned:
const id = setInterval(() => {

// runs every 2 seconds

}, 2000)

clearInterval(id)

It's common to call clearInterval inside the setInterval callback

function, to let it auto-determine if it should run again or stop. For example
this code runs something unless [Link] has the value
arrived : const interval = setInterval(() => {

if ([Link] === 'arrived') {

clearInterval(interval)
 }

// otherwise do things

}, 100)

31.3. Recursive setTimeout

setInterval starts a function every n milliseconds, without any
consideration about when a function finished its execution.

If a function always takes the same amount of time, it's all fine:

Maybe the function takes different execution times, depending on network

conditions for example:

And maybe one long execution overlaps the next one:

To avoid this, you can schedule a recursive setTimeout to be called when

the callback function finishes: const myFunction = () => {

// do something
 setTimeout(myFunction, 1000)

setTimeout(myFunction, 1000)

to achieve this scenario:

setTimeout and setInterval are available in [Link], through the

Timers module.

[Link] also provides setImmediate() , which is equivalent to using

setTimeout(() => {}, 0) , mostly used to work with the [Link] Event
Loop.
32. The Node Event emitter
If you worked with JavaScript in the browser, you know how much of the
interaction of the user is handled through events: mouse clicks, keyboard
button presses, reacting to mouse movements, and so on.

On the backend side, [Link] offers us the option to build a similar system
using the events module.

This module, in particular, offers the EventEmitter class, which we'll use
to handle our events.

You initialize that using const EventEmitter = require('events')

const eventEmitter = new EventEmitter()

This object exposes, among many others, the on and emit methods.

emit is used to trigger an event

on is used to add a callback function that's going to be executed
when the event is triggered

For example, let's create a start event, and as a matter of providing a

sample, we react to that by just logging to the console:
[Link]('start', () => {

[Link]('started')

})
When we run

[Link]('start')

the event handler function is triggered, and we get the console log.

You can pass arguments to the event handler by passing them as additional
arguments to emit() : [Link]('start', (number) => {

[Link](`started ${number}`)

})

[Link]('start', 23)

Multiple arguments:

[Link]('start', (start, end) => {

[Link](`started from ${start} to ${end}`)

})

[Link]('start', 1, 100)

The EventEmitter object also exposes several other methods to interact with
events, like

once() : add a one-time listener

removeListener() / off() : remove an event listener from an event
removeAllListeners() : remove all listeners for an event
You can read all their details on the events module page at
[Link]
33. Working with file descriptors in
Node
Before you're able to interact with a file that sits in your filesystem, you
must get a file descriptor.

A file descriptor is a reference to an open file, a number (fd) returned by

opening the file using the open() method offered by the fs module.
This number ( fd ) uniquely identifies an open file in operating system:
const fs = require('fs')

[Link]('/Users/joe/[Link]', 'r', (err, fd) => {

// fd is our file descriptor

})

Notice the r we used as the second parameter to the [Link]() call.

That flag means we open the file for reading.

Other flags you'll commonly use are:

r+ open the file for reading and writing, if file doesn't exist it won't
be created.
w+ open the file for reading and writing, positioning the stream at the
beginning of the file. The file is created if not existing.
a open the file for writing, positioning the stream at the end of the
file. The file is created if not existing.
 a+ open the file for reading and writing, positioning the stream at the
end of the file. The file is created if not existing.

You can also open the file by using the [Link] method, which
returns the file descriptor, instead of providing it in a callback: const fs =

require('fs')

try {

const fd = [Link]('/Users/joe/[Link]', 'r')

} catch (err) {

[Link](err)

Once you get the file descriptor, in whatever way you choose, you can
perform all the operations that require it, like calling [Link]() and
many other operations that interact with the filesystem.

You can also open the file by using the promise-based [Link]

method offered by the fs/promises module.

The fs/promises module is available starting only from [Link] v14.

Before v14, after v10, you can use require('fs').promises instead.
Before v10, after v8, you can use [Link] to convert fs

methods into promise-based methods.

 const fs = require('fs/promises')

// Or const fs = require('fs').promises before v14.

async function example( ) {

let filehandle

try {

filehandle = await [Link]('/Users/joe/[Link]', 'r')

[Link]([Link])

[Link](await [Link]({ encoding: 'utf8'

}))

} finally {

await [Link]()

example()

Here is an example of [Link] : const fs = require('fs')

const util = require('util')

async function example( ) {

const open = [Link]([Link])

const fd = await open('/Users/joe/[Link]', 'r')

example()

To see more details about the fs/promises module, please check

fs/promises API.
34. Node file stats
Every file comes with a set of details that we can inspect using [Link].

In particular, using the stat() method provided by the fs module.

You call it passing a file path, and once [Link] gets the file details it will
call the callback function you pass, with 2 parameters: an error message,
and the file stats: const fs = require('fs')

[Link]('/Users/joe/[Link]', (err, stats) => {

if (err) {

[Link](err)

// we have access to the file stats in `stats`

})

[Link] also provides a sync method, which blocks the thread until the file
stats are ready: const fs = require('fs')

try {

const stats = [Link]('/Users/joe/[Link]')

} catch (err) {

[Link](err)

}
The file information is included in the stats variable. What kind of
information can we extract using the stats?

A lot, including:

if the file is a directory or a file, using [Link]() and

[Link]()

if the file is a symbolic link using [Link]()

the file size in bytes using [Link] .

There are other advanced methods, but the bulk of what you'll use in your
day-to-day programming is this.

const fs = require('fs')

[Link]('/Users/joe/[Link]', (err, stats) => {

if (err) {

[Link](err)

return

[Link]() // true

[Link]() // false

[Link]() // false

[Link] // 1024000 //= 1MB

})
You can also use promise-based [Link]() method offered by
the fs/promises module if you like: const fs = require('fs/promises')

async function example( ) {

try {

const stats = await [Link]('/Users/joe/[Link]')

[Link]() // true

[Link]() // false

[Link]() // false

[Link] // 1024000 //= 1MB

} catch (err) {

[Link](err)

example()
35. Node File Paths
Every file in the system has a path.

On Linux and macOS, a path might look like: /users/joe/[Link]

while Windows computers are different, and have a structure such as:
C:\users\joe\[Link]

You need to pay attention when using paths in your applications, as this
difference must be taken into account.

You include this module in your files using const path = require('path')

and you can start using its methods.

35.1. Getting information out of a path

Given a path, you can extract information out of it using those methods:

dirname : get the parent folder of a file

basename : get the filename part
extname : get the file extension

Example:
 const notes = '/users/joe/[Link]'

[Link](notes) // /users/joe

[Link](notes) // [Link]

[Link](notes) // .txt

You can get the file name without the extension by specifying a second
argument to basename : [Link](notes, [Link](notes)) //

notes

35.2. Working with paths

You can join two or more parts of a path by using [Link]() : const

name = 'joe'

[Link]('/', 'users', name, '[Link]') //

'/users/joe/[Link]'

You can get the absolute path calculation of a relative path using
[Link]() : [Link]('[Link]') // '/Users/joe/[Link]' if

run from my home folder

In this case [Link] will simply append /[Link] to the current working
directory. If you specify a second parameter folder, resolve will use the
first as a base for the second: [Link]('tmp', '[Link]') //

'/Users/joe/tmp/[Link]' if run from my home folder

If the first parameter starts with a slash, that means it's an absolute path:
[Link]('/etc', '[Link]') // '/etc/[Link]'

[Link]() is another useful function, that will try and calculate

the actual path, when it contains relative specifiers like . or .. , or
double slashes: [Link]('/users/joe/..//[Link]') //

'/users/[Link]'

Neither resolve nor normalize will check if the path exists. They just
calculate a path based on the information they got.
36. Reading files with Node
The simplest way to read a file in [Link] is to use the [Link]()

method, passing it the file path, encoding and a callback function that will
be called with the file data (and the error): const fs = require('fs')

[Link]('/Users/joe/[Link]', 'utf8', (err, data) => {

if (err) {

[Link](err)

return

[Link](data)

})

Alternatively, you can use the synchronous version [Link]() :

const fs = require('fs')

try {

const data = [Link]('/Users/joe/[Link]', 'utf8')

[Link](data)

} catch (err) {

[Link](err)

}
You can also use the promise-based [Link]() method
offered by the fs/promises module: const fs = require('fs/promises')

async function example( ) {

try {

const data = await [Link]('/Users/joe/[Link]', {

encoding: 'utf8' })

[Link](data)

} catch (err) {

[Link](err)

example()

All three of [Link]() , [Link]() and

[Link]() read the full content of the file in memory before
returning the data.

This means that big files are going to have a major impact on your memory
consumption and speed of execution of the program.

In this case, a better option is to read the file content using streams.
37. Writing files with Node
The easiest way to write to files in [Link] is to use the [Link]()

API.

Example:

const fs = require('fs')

const content = 'Some content!'

[Link]('/Users/joe/[Link]', content, (err) => {

if (err) {

[Link](err)

// file written successfully

})

Alternatively, you can use the synchronous version [Link]() :

const fs = require('fs')

const content = 'Some content!'

try {

[Link]('/Users/joe/[Link]', content)
 // file written successfully

} catch (err) {

[Link](err)

You can also use the promise-based [Link]() method

offered by the fs/promises module: const fs = require('fs/promises')

async function example( ) {

try {

const content = 'Some content!'

await [Link]('/Users/joe/[Link]', content)

} catch (err) {

[Link](err)

example()

By default, this API will replace the contents of the file if it does already
exist.

You can modify the default by specifying a flag:

[Link]('/Users/joe/[Link]', content, { flag: 'a+' }, (err)

=> {})

The flags you'll likely use are

r+ open the file for reading and writing

 w+ open the file for reading and writing, positioning the stream at the
beginning of the file. The file is created if it does not exist
a open the file for writing, positioning the stream at the end of the
file. The file is created if it does not exist
a+ open the file for reading and writing, positioning the stream at the
end of the file. The file is created if it does not exist

(you can find more flags at

[Link]

37.1. Append to a file

A handy method to append content to the end of a file is [Link]()

(and its [Link]() counterpart): const content = 'Some

content!'

[Link]('[Link]', content, (err) => {

if (err) {

[Link](err)

// done!

})

Here is a [Link]() example: const fs =

require('fs/promises')

async function example( ) {

try {
 const content = 'Some content!'

await [Link]('/Users/joe/[Link]', content)

} catch (err) {

[Link](err)

example()

37.2. Using streams

All those methods write the full content to the file before returning the
control back to your program (in the async version, this means executing
the callback) In this case, a better option is to write the file content using
streams.
38. Working with folders
The [Link] fs core module provides many handy methods you can use
to work with folders.

38.1. Check if a folder exists

Use [Link]() (and its promise-based [Link]()

counterpart) to check if the folder exists and [Link] can access it with its
permissions.

38.2. Create a new folder

Use [Link]() or [Link]() or [Link]() to create a
new folder.
 const fs = require('fs')

const folderName = '/Users/joe/test'

try {

if () {

[Link](folderName)

} catch (err) {

[Link](err)

38.3. Read the content of a directory

Use [Link]() or [Link]() or [Link]() to
read the contents of a directory.

This piece of code reads the content of a folder, both files and subfolders,
and returns their relative path: const fs = require('fs')

const folderPath = '/Users/joe'

[Link](folderPath)

You can get the full path: [Link](folderPath).map((fileName) =>

return [Link](folderPath, fileName)

})

You can also filter the results to only return the files, and exclude the
folders: const isFile = (fileName) => {

return [Link](fileName).isFile()

[Link](folderPath)

.map((fileName) => {

return [Link](folderPath, fileName)

})

.filter(isFile)

38.4. Rename a folder

Use [Link]() or [Link]() or [Link]() to
rename folder. The first parameter is the current path, the second the new
path: const fs = require('fs')

[Link]('/Users/joe', '/Users/roger', (err) => {

if (err) {

[Link](err)

// done

})
 [Link]() is the synchronous version: const fs = require('fs')

try {

[Link]('/Users/joe', '/Users/roger')

} catch (err) {

[Link](err)

[Link]() is the promise-based version: const fs =

require('fs/promises')

async function example( ) {

try {

await [Link]('/Users/joe', '/Users/roger')

} catch (err) {

[Link](err)

example()

38.5. Remove a folder

Use [Link]() or [Link]() or [Link]() to remove
a folder.

Removing a folder that has content can be more complicated than you need.
You can pass the option { recursive: true } to recursively remove the
contents.
const fs = require('fs')

[Link](dir, { recursive: true }, (err) => {

if (err) {

throw err

[Link](`${dir} is deleted!`)

})

NOTE: In Node v16.x the option recursive is deprecated for

[Link] of callback API, instead use [Link] to delete folders that
have content in them:

const fs = require('fs')

[Link](dir, { recursive: true, force: true }, (err) => {

if (err) {

throw err

[Link](`${dir} is deleted!`)

})
Or you can install and make use of the fs-extra module, which is very
popular and well maintained. It's a drop-in replacement of the fs module,
which provides more features on top of it.

In this case the remove() method is what you want.

Install it using

npm install fs-extra

and use it like this:

const fs = require('fs-extra')

const folder = '/Users/joe'

[Link](folder, (err) => {

[Link](err)

})

It can also be used with promises: [Link](folder)

.then(() => {

// done

})

.catch((err) => {

[Link](err)

})
or with async/await:

async function removeFolder(folder) {

try {

await [Link](folder)

// done

} catch (err) {

[Link](err)

const folder = '/Users/joe'

removeFolder(folder)
39. The Node fs module
The fs module provides a lot of very useful functionality to access and
interact with the file system.

There is no need to install it. Being part of the [Link] core, it can be used
by simply requiring it: const fs = require('fs')

Once you do so, you have access to all its methods, which include:

[Link]() : check if the file exists and [Link] can access it with
its permissions
[Link]() : append data to a file. If the file does not exist, it's
created
[Link]() : change the permissions of a file specified by the
filename passed. Related: [Link]() , [Link]()

[Link]() : change the owner and group of a file specified by the

filename passed. Related: [Link]() , [Link]()

[Link]() : close a file descriptor

[Link]() : copies a file
[Link]() : create a readable file stream
[Link]() : create a writable file stream
[Link]() : create a new hard link to a file
[Link]() : create a new folder
[Link]() : create a temporary directory
 [Link]() : opens the file and returns a file descriptor to allow file
manipulation
[Link]() : read the contents of a directory
[Link]() : read the content of a file. Related: [Link]()

[Link]() : read the value of a symbolic link

[Link]() : resolve relative file path pointers ( . , .. ) to the
full path
[Link]() : rename a file or folder
[Link]() : remove a folder
[Link]() : returns the status of the file identified by the filename
passed. Related: [Link]() , [Link]()

[Link]() : create a new symbolic link to a file

[Link]() : truncate to the specified length the file identified by
the filename passed. Related: [Link]()

[Link]() : remove a file or a symbolic link

[Link]() : stop watching for changes on a file
[Link]() : change the timestamp of the file identified by the
filename passed. Related: [Link]()

[Link]() : start watching for changes on a file. Related:

[Link]()

[Link]() : write data to a file. Related: [Link]()

One peculiar thing about the fs module is that all the methods are
asynchronous by default, but they can also work synchronously by
appending Sync .

For example:
 [Link]()

[Link]()

[Link]()

[Link]()

This makes a huge difference in your application flow.

[Link] 10 includes experimental support for a promise based API

For example let's examine the [Link]() method. The asynchronous

API is used with a callback: const fs = require('fs')

[Link]('[Link]', '[Link]', (err) => {

if (err) {

return [Link](err)

// done

})

A synchronous API can be used like this, with a try/catch block to handle
errors: const fs = require('fs')

try {

[Link]('[Link]', '[Link]')

// done

} catch (err) {

[Link](err)

}
The key difference here is that the execution of your script will block in the
second example, until the file operation succeeded.

You can use promise-based API provided by fs/promises module to

avoid using callback-based API, which may cause callback hell. Here is an
example: // Example: Read a file and change its content and read

// it again using callback-based API.

const fs = require('fs')

const fileName = '/Users/joe/[Link]'

[Link](fileName, 'utf8', (err, data) => {

if (err) {

[Link](err)

return

[Link](data)

const content = 'Some content!'

[Link](fileName, content, (err2) => {

if (err2) {

[Link](err2)

return

[Link]('Wrote some content!')

[Link](fileName, 'utf8', (err3, data3) => {

if (err3) {

[Link](err3)

return
 }

[Link](data3)

})

})

})

The callback-based API may rises callback hell when there are too many
nested callbacks. We can simply use promise-based API to avoid it: //

Example: Read a file and change its content and read

// it again using promise-based API.

const fs = require('fs/promises')

async function example( ) {

const fileName = '/Users/joe/[Link]'

try {

const data = await [Link](fileName, 'utf8')

[Link](data)

const content = 'Some content!'

await [Link](fileName, content)

[Link]('Wrote some content!')

const newData = await [Link](fileName, 'utf8')

[Link](newData)

} catch (err) {

[Link](err)

example()
40. The Node path module
The path module provides a lot of very useful functionality to access and
interact with the file system.

There is no need to install it. Being part of the [Link] core, it can be used
by simply requiring it: const path = require('path')

This module provides [Link] which provides the path segment

separator ( \ on Windows, and / on Linux / macOS), and
[Link] which provides the path delimiter ( ; on Windows, and
: on Linux / macOS).

These are the path methods:

40.0.1. [Link]()

Return the last portion of a path. A second parameter can filter out the file
extension: require('path').basename('/test/something') // something

require('path').basename('/test/[Link]') // [Link]

require('path').basename('/test/[Link]', '.txt') //

something
40.0.2. [Link]()

Return the directory part of a path:

require('path').dirname('/test/something') // /test

require('path').dirname('/test/something/[Link]') //

/test/something

40.0.3. [Link]()

Return the extension part of a path

require('path').extname('/test/something') // ''

require('path').extname('/test/something/[Link]') // '.txt'

40.0.4. [Link]()

Returns a path string from an object, This is the opposite of [Link]

[Link] accepts an object as argument with the following keys:

root : the root

dir : the folder path starting from the root
base : the file name + extension
name : the file name
ext : the file extension

root is ignored if dir is provided

ext and name are ignored if base exists // POSIX

require('path').format({ dir: '/Users/joe', base: '[Link]' }) //

'/Users/joe/[Link]'
require('path').format({ root: '/Users/joe', name: 'test', ext:

'.txt' }) // '/Users/joe/[Link]'

// WINDOWS

require('path').format({ dir: 'C:\\Users\\joe', base: '[Link]' })

// 'C:\\Users\\joe\\[Link]'

40.0.5. [Link]()

Returns true if it's an absolute path

require('path').isAbsolute('/test/something') // true

require('path').isAbsolute('./test/something') // false

40.0.6. [Link]()

Joins two or more parts of a path: const name = 'joe'

require('path').join('/', 'users', name, '[Link]') //

'/users/joe/[Link]'

40.0.7. [Link]()

Tries to calculate the actual path when it contains relative specifiers like .

or .. , or double slashes:
require('path').normalize('/users/joe/..//[Link]') //

'/users/[Link]'
40.0.8. [Link]()

Parses a path to an object with the segments that compose it:

root : the root

dir : the folder path starting from the root
base : the file name + extension
name : the file name
ext : the file extension

Example:

require('path').parse('/users/[Link]')

results in

root: '/',

dir: '/users',

base: '[Link]',

ext: '.txt',

name: 'test'

}
40.0.9. [Link]()

Accepts 2 paths as arguments. Returns the relative path from the first path
to the second, based on the current working directory.

Example:

require('path').relative('/Users/joe', '/Users/joe/[Link]')

// '[Link]'

require('path').relative('/Users/joe',

'/Users/joe/something/[Link]') // 'something/[Link]'

40.0.10. [Link]()

You can get the absolute path calculation of a relative path using
[Link]() : require('path').resolve('[Link]') //

'/Users/joe/[Link]' if run from my home folder

By specifying a second parameter, resolve will use the first as a base for
the second: require('path').resolve('tmp', '[Link]') //

'/Users/joe/tmp/[Link]' if run from my home folder

If the first parameter starts with a slash, that means it's an absolute path:
require('path').resolve('/etc', '[Link]') // '/etc/[Link]'
41. The Node os module
This module provides many functions that you can use to retrieve
information from the underlying operating system and the computer the
program runs on, and interact with it.

const os = require('os')

There are a few useful properties that tell us some key things related to
handling files: [Link] gives the line delimiter sequence. It's \n on
Linux and macOS, and \r\n on Windows.

[Link] tells us all the constants related to handling

process signals, like SIGHUP, SIGKILL and so on.

[Link] sets the constants for error reporting, like

EADDRINUSE, EOVERFLOW and more.

You can read them all on

[Link]

Let's now see the main methods that os provides:

41.1. [Link]()
Return the string that identifies the underlying architecture, like arm ,
x64 , arm64 .
41.2. [Link]()
Return information on the CPUs available on your system.

Example:
/*

model: 'Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo CPU P8600 @ 2.40GHz',

speed: 2400,

times: {

user: 281685380,

nice: 0,

sys: 187986530,

idle: 685833750,

irq: 0,

},

},

model: 'Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo CPU P8600 @ 2.40GHz',

speed: 2400,

times: {

user: 282348700,

nice: 0,

sys: 161800480,

idle: 703509470,

irq: 0,

},

},
 ]

*/

41.3. [Link]()
Return the number of bytes that represent the free memory in the system.

41.4. [Link]()
Return the path to the home directory of the current user.

Example:

'/Users/joe'

41.5. [Link]()
Return the host name.

41.6. [Link]()
Return the calculation made by the operating system on the load average.

It only returns a meaningful value on Linux and macOS.

Example:
 //[3.68798828125, 4.00244140625, 11.1181640625]

41.7. [Link]()
Returns the details of the network interfaces available on your system.

Example:
{ lo0:

[ { address: '[Link]',

netmask: '[Link]',

family: 'IPv4',

mac: 'fe:82:00:00:00:00',

internal: true },

{ address: '::1',

netmask: 'ffff:ffff:ffff:ffff:ffff:ffff:ffff:ffff',

family: 'IPv6',

mac: 'fe:82:00:00:00:00',

scopeid: 0,

internal: true },

{ address: 'fe80::1',

netmask: 'ffff:ffff:ffff:ffff::',

family: 'IPv6',

mac: 'fe:82:00:00:00:00',

scopeid: 1,

internal: true } ],

en1:

[ { address: 'fe82::9b:8282:d7e6:496e',

netmask: 'ffff:ffff:ffff:ffff::',

family: 'IPv6',

mac: '06:00:00:02:0e:00',

scopeid: 5,

internal: false },

{ address: '[Link]',
 netmask: '[Link]',

family: 'IPv4',

mac: '06:00:00:02:0e:00',

internal: false } ],

utun0:

[ { address: 'fe80::2513:72bc:f405:61d0',

netmask: 'ffff:ffff:ffff:ffff::',

family: 'IPv6',

mac: 'fe:80:00:20:00:00',

scopeid: 8,

internal: false } ] }

41.8. [Link]()
Return the platform that [Link] was compiled for:

darwin

freebsd

linux

openbsd

win32

...more

41.9. [Link]()
Returns a string that identifies the operating system release number
41.10. [Link]()
Returns the path to the assigned temp folder.

41.11. [Link]()
Returns the number of bytes that represent the total memory available in the
system.

41.12. [Link]()
Identifies the operating system:

Linux

Darwin on macOS
Windows_NT on Windows

41.13. [Link]()
Returns the number of seconds the computer has been running since it was
last rebooted.

41.14. [Link]()
Returns an object that contains the current username , uid , gid ,
shell , and homedir
42. The Node events module
The events module provides us the EventEmitter class, which is key to
working with events in [Link].

const EventEmitter = require('events')

const door = new EventEmitter()

The event listener has these in-built events:

newListener when a listener is added

removeListener when a listener is removed

Here's a detailed description of the most useful methods:

42.1. [Link]()
Alias for [Link]() .

42.2. [Link]()
Emits an event. It synchronously calls every event listener in the order they
were registered.
 [Link]('slam') // emitting the event "slam"

42.3. [Link]()
Return an array of strings that represent the events registered on the current
EventEmitter object: [Link]()

42.4. [Link]()
Get the maximum amount of listeners one can add to an EventEmitter

object, which defaults to 10 but can be increased or lowered by using

setMaxListeners()

[Link]()

42.5. [Link]()
Get the count of listeners of the event passed as parameter:
[Link]('open')

42.6. [Link]()
Gets an array of listeners of the event passed as parameter:
[Link]('open')
42.7. [Link]()
Alias for [Link]() added in [Link] 10

42.8. [Link]()
Adds a callback function that's called when an event is emitted.

Usage:

[Link]('open', () => {

[Link]('Door was opened')

})

42.9. [Link]()
Adds a callback function that's called when an event is emitted for the first
time after registering this. This callback is only going to be called once,
never again.
 const EventEmitter = require('events')

const ee = new EventEmitter()

[Link]('my-event', () => {

// call callback function once

})

42.10. [Link]()
When you add a listener using on or addListener , it's added last in the
queue of listeners, and called last. Using prependListener it's added, and
called, before other listeners.

42.11. [Link]()
When you add a listener using once , it's added last in the queue of
listeners, and called last. Using prependOnceListener it's added, and
called, before other listeners.

42.12. [Link]()
Removes all listeners of an EventEmitter object listening to a specific
event: [Link]('open')
42.13. [Link]()
Remove a specific listener. You can do this by saving the callback function
to a variable, when added, so you can reference it later: const doSomething

= () => {}

[Link]('open', doSomething)

[Link]('open', doSomething)

42.14. [Link]()
Sets the maximum amount of listeners one can add to an EventEmitter

object, which defaults to 10 but can be increased or lowered.

[Link](50)
43. The Node http module
The HTTP core module is a key module to [Link] networking.

It can be included using const http = require('http')

The module provides some properties and methods, and some classes.

43.1. Properties

43.1.1. [Link]

This property lists all the HTTP methods supported: >

require('http').METHODS

[ 'ACL',

'BIND',

'CHECKOUT',

'CONNECT',

'COPY',

'DELETE',

'GET',

'HEAD',

'LINK',

'LOCK',

'M-SEARCH',

'MERGE',
 'MKACTIVITY',

'MKCALENDAR',

'MKCOL',

'MOVE',

'NOTIFY',

'OPTIONS',

'PATCH',

'POST',

'PROPFIND',

'PROPPATCH',

'PURGE',

'PUT',

'REBIND',

'REPORT',

'SEARCH',

'SUBSCRIBE',

'TRACE',

'UNBIND',

'UNLINK',

'UNLOCK',

'UNSUBSCRIBE' ]

43.1.2. http.STATUS_CODES

This property lists all the HTTP status codes and their description: >

require('http').STATUS_CODES

{ '100': 'Continue',
'101': 'Switching Protocols',

'102': 'Processing',

'200': 'OK',

'201': 'Created',

'202': 'Accepted',

'203': 'Non-Authoritative Information',

'204': 'No Content',

'205': 'Reset Content',

'206': 'Partial Content',

'207': 'Multi-Status',

'208': 'Already Reported',

'226': 'IM Used',

'300': 'Multiple Choices',

'301': 'Moved Permanently',

'302': 'Found',

'303': 'See Other',

'304': 'Not Modified',

'305': 'Use Proxy',

'307': 'Temporary Redirect',

'308': 'Permanent Redirect',

'400': 'Bad Request',

'401': 'Unauthorized',

'402': 'Payment Required',

'403': 'Forbidden',

'404': 'Not Found',

'405': 'Method Not Allowed',

'406': 'Not Acceptable',

'407': 'Proxy Authentication Required',

'408': 'Request Timeout',

'409': 'Conflict',

'410': 'Gone',

'411': 'Length Required',

'412': 'Precondition Failed',

'413': 'Payload Too Large',

'414': 'URI Too Long',

'415': 'Unsupported Media Type',

'416': 'Range Not Satisfiable',

'417': 'Expectation Failed',

'418': 'I\'m a teapot',

'421': 'Misdirected Request',

'422': 'Unprocessable Entity',

'423': 'Locked',

'424': 'Failed Dependency',

'425': 'Unordered Collection',

'426': 'Upgrade Required',

'428': 'Precondition Required',

'429': 'Too Many Requests',

'431': 'Request Header Fields Too Large',

'451': 'Unavailable For Legal Reasons',

'500': 'Internal Server Error',

'501': 'Not Implemented',

'502': 'Bad Gateway',

'503': 'Service Unavailable',

'504': 'Gateway Timeout',

 '505': 'HTTP Version Not Supported',

'506': 'Variant Also Negotiates',

'507': 'Insufficient Storage',

'508': 'Loop Detected',

'509': 'Bandwidth Limit Exceeded',

'510': 'Not Extended',

'511': 'Network Authentication Required' }

43.1.3. [Link]

Points to the global instance of the Agent object, which is an instance of the
[Link] class.

It's used to manage connections persistence and reuse for HTTP clients, and
it's a key component of [Link] HTTP networking.

More in the [Link] class description later on.

43.2. Methods

43.2.1. [Link]()

Returns a new instance of the [Link] class.

Usage:
 const server = [Link]((req, res) => {

// handle every single request with this callback

})

43.2.2. [Link]()

Makes an HTTP request to a server, creating an instance of the

[Link] class.

43.2.3. [Link]()

Similar to [Link]() , but automatically sets the HTTP method to

GET, and calls [Link]() automatically.

43.3. Classes
The HTTP module provides 5 classes:

[Link]

[Link]

[Link]

[Link]

[Link]
43.3.1. [Link]

[Link] creates a global instance of the [Link] class to manage

connections persistence and reuse for HTTP clients, a key component of
[Link] HTTP networking.

This object makes sure that every request made to a server is queued and a
single socket is reused.

It also maintains a pool of sockets. This is key for performance reasons.

43.3.2. [Link]

An [Link] object is created when [Link]() or

[Link]() is called.

When a response is received, the response event is called with the

response, with an [Link] instance as argument.

The returned data of a response can be read in 2 ways:

you can call the [Link]() method

in the response event handler you can setup an event listener for the
data event, so you can listen for the data streamed into.

43.3.3. [Link]

This class is commonly instantiated and returned when creating a new

server using [Link]() .
Once you have a server object, you have access to its methods:

close() stops the server from accepting new connections

listen() starts the HTTP server and listens for connections

43.3.4. [Link]

Created by an [Link] and passed as the second parameter to the

request event it fires.

Commonly known and used in code as res : const server =

[Link]((req, res) => {

// res is an [Link] object

})

The method you'll always call in the handler is end() , which closes the
response, the message is complete and the server can send it to the client. It
must be called on each response.

These methods are used to interact with HTTP headers:

getHeaderNames() get the list of the names of the HTTP headers

already set
getHeaders() get a copy of the HTTP headers already set
setHeader('headername', value) sets an HTTP header value
getHeader('headername') gets an HTTP header already set
removeHeader('headername') removes an HTTP header already set
hasHeader('headername') return true if the response has that header
set
 headersSent() return true if the headers have already been sent to
the client

After processing the headers you can send them to the client by calling
[Link]() , which accepts the statusCode as the first
parameter, the optional status message, and the headers object.

To send data to the client in the response body, you use write() . It will
send buffered data to the HTTP response stream.

If the headers were not sent yet using [Link]() , it will send
the headers first, with the status code and message that's set in the request,
which you can edit by setting the statusCode and statusMessage

properties values: [Link] = 500

[Link] = 'Internal Server Error'

43.3.5. [Link]

An [Link] object is created by:

[Link] when listening to the request event

[Link] when listening to the response event

It can be used to access the response:

status using its statusCode and statusMessage methods

headers using its headers method or rawHeaders

HTTP method using its method method

HTTP version using the httpVersion method
URL using the url method
 underlying socket using the socket method

The data is accessed using streams, since [Link]

implements the Readable Stream interface.

44. [Link] Streams
44.1. What are streams
Streams are one of the fundamental concepts that power [Link]
applications.

They are a way to handle reading/writing files, network communications, or

any kind of end-to-end information exchange in an efficient way.

Streams are not a concept unique to [Link]. They were introduced in the
Unix operating system decades ago, and programs can interact with each
other passing streams through the pipe operator ( | ).

For example, in the traditional way, when you tell the program to read a
file, the file is read into memory, from start to finish, and then you process
it.

Using streams you read it piece by piece, processing its content without
keeping it all in memory.

The [Link] stream module provides the foundation upon which all
streaming APIs are built. All streams are instances of EventEmitter

44.2. Why streams

Streams basically provide two major advantages over using other data
handling methods:
 Memory efficiency: you don't need to load large amounts of data in
memory before you are able to process it
Time efficiency: it takes way less time to start processing data, since
you can start processing as soon as you have it, rather than waiting till
the whole data payload is available

44.3. An example of a stream

A typical example is reading files from a disk.

Using the [Link] fs module, you can read a file, and serve it over HTTP
when a new connection is established to your HTTP server: const http =

require('http')

const fs = require('fs')

const server = [Link](function (req, res) {

[Link](`${__dirname}/[Link]`, (err, data) => {

[Link](data)

})

})

[Link](3000)

readFile() reads the full contents of the file, and invokes the callback
function when it's done.

[Link](data) in the callback will return the file contents to the HTTP
client.
If the file is big, the operation will take quite a bit of time. Here is the same
thing written using streams: const http = require('http')

const fs = require('fs')

const server = [Link]((req, res) => {

const stream = [Link](`${__dirname}/[Link]`)

[Link](res)

})

[Link](3000)

Instead of waiting until the file is fully read, we start streaming it to the
HTTP client as soon as we have a chunk of data ready to be sent.

44.4. pipe()
The above example uses the line [Link](res) : the pipe() method
is called on the file stream.

What does this code do? It takes the source, and pipes it into a destination.

You call it on the source stream, so in this case, the file stream is piped to
the HTTP response.

The return value of the pipe() method is the destination stream, which is
a very convenient thing that lets us chain multiple pipe() calls, like this:
[Link](dest1).pipe(dest2)

This construct is the same as doing [Link](dest1)

[Link](dest2)
44.5. Streams-powered [Link] APIs
Due to their advantages, many [Link] core modules provide native stream
handling capabilities, most notably:

[Link] returns a stream connected to stdin

[Link] returns a stream connected to stdout
[Link] returns a stream connected to stderr
[Link]() creates a readable stream to a file
[Link]() creates a writable stream to a file
[Link]() initiates a stream-based connection
[Link]() returns an instance of the [Link] class,
which is a writable stream
[Link]() compress data using gzip (a compression
algorithm) into a stream
[Link]() decompress a gzip stream.
[Link]() compress data using deflate (a compression
algorithm) into a stream
[Link]() decompress a deflate stream

44.6. Different types of streams

There are four classes of streams:

Readable : a stream you can pipe from, but not pipe into (you can
receive data, but not send data to it). When you push data into a
readable stream, it is buffered, until a consumer starts to read the data.
 Writable : a stream you can pipe into, but not pipe from (you can
send data, but not receive from it)
Duplex : a stream you can both pipe into and pipe from, basically a
combination of a Readable and Writable stream
Transform : a Transform stream is similar to a Duplex, but the output
is a transform of its input

44.7. How to create a readable stream

We get the Readable stream from the stream module, and we initialize it
and implement the readable._read() method.

First create a stream object: const Stream = require('stream')

const readableStream = new [Link]()

then implement _read : readableStream._read = () => {}

You can also implement _read using the read option: const

readableStream = new [Link]({

read( ) {},

})

Now that the stream is initialized, we can send data to it:

[Link]('hi!')

[Link]('ho!')
44.8. How to create a writable stream
To create a writable stream we extend the base Writable object, and we
implement its _write() method.

First create a stream object: const Stream = require('stream')

const writableStream = new [Link]()

then implement _write : writableStream._write = (chunk, encoding,

next) => {

[Link]([Link]())

next()

You can now pipe a readable stream in:

[Link](writableStream)

44.9. How to get data from a readable stream

How do we read data from a readable stream? Using a writable stream:
const Stream = require('stream')

const readableStream = new [Link]({

read( ) {},

})

const writableStream = new [Link]()

writableStream._write = (chunk, encoding, next) => {

[Link]([Link]())

next()

[Link](writableStream)

[Link]('hi!')

[Link]('ho!')

You can also consume a readable stream directly, using the readable

event: [Link]('readable', () => {

[Link]([Link]())

})

44.10. How to send data to a writable stream

Using the stream write() method: [Link]('hey!\n')

44.11. Signaling a writable stream that you ended

writing
Use the end() method: const Stream = require('stream')

const readableStream = new [Link]({

read( ) {},
})

const writableStream = new [Link]()

writableStream._write = (chunk, encoding, next) => {

[Link]([Link]())

next()

[Link](writableStream)

[Link]('hi!')

[Link]('ho!')

[Link]('close', () => [Link]())

[Link]('close', () => [Link]('ended'))

[Link]()

In the above example, end() is called within a listener to the close

event on the readable stream to ensure it is not called before all write events
have passed through the pipe, as doing so would cause an error event to
be emitted. Calling destroy() on the readable stream causes the close

event to be emitted. The listener to the close event on the writable stream
demonstrates the completion of the process as it is emitted after the call to
end() .
44.12. How to create a transform stream
We get the Transform stream from the stream module, and we initialize it
and implement the transform._transform() method.

First create a transform stream object: const { Transform } =

require('stream')

const transformStream = new Transform()

then implement _transform : transformStream._transform = (chunk,

encoding, callback) => {

[Link]([Link]().toUpperCase())

callback()

Pipe readable stream:

[Link](transformStream).pipe([Link])
45. Node, the difference between
development and production
You can have different configurations for production and development
environments.

[Link] assumes it's always running in a development environment. You

can signal [Link] that you are running in production by setting the
NODE_ENV=production environment variable.

This is usually done by executing the command export

NODE_ENV=production

in the shell, but it's better to put it in your shell configuration file (e.g.
.bash_profile with the Bash shell) because otherwise the setting does not
persist in case of a system restart.

You can also apply the environment variable by prepending it to your

application initialization command: NODE_ENV=production node [Link]

This environment variable is a convention that is widely used in external

libraries as well.

Setting the environment to production generally ensures that

logging is kept to a minimum, essential level

more caching levels take place to optimize performance
For example Pug, the templating library used by Express, compiles in
debug mode if NODE_ENV is not set to production . Express views are
compiled in every request in development mode, while in production they
are cached. There are many more examples.

You can use conditional statements to execute code in different

environments: if ([Link].NODE_ENV === 'development') {

// ...

if ([Link].NODE_ENV === 'production') {

// ...

if (['production', 'staging'].indexOf([Link].NODE_ENV) >= 0) {

// ...

For example, in an Express app, you can use this to set different error
handlers per environment: if ([Link].NODE_ENV === 'development')

[Link]([Link]({ dumpExceptions: true, showStack:

true }))

if ([Link].NODE_ENV === 'production') {

[Link]([Link]())

}
46. Error handling in [Link]
Errors in [Link] are handled through exceptions.

46.1. Creating exceptions

An exception is created using the throw keyword: throw value

As soon as JavaScript executes this line, the normal program flow is halted
and the control is held back to the nearest exception handler.

Usually in client-side code value can be any JavaScript value including a

string, a number or an object.

In [Link], we don't throw strings, we just throw Error objects.

46.2. Error objects

An error object is an object that is either an instance of the Error object, or
extends the Error class, provided in the Error core module: throw new

Error('Ran out of coffee')

or
 class NotEnoughCoffeeError extends Error {

// ...

throw new NotEnoughCoffeeError()

46.3. Handling exceptions

An exception handler is a try / catch statement.

Any exception raised in the lines of code included in the try block is
handled in the corresponding catch block: try {

// lines of code

} catch (e) {}

e in this example is the exception value.

You can add multiple handlers, that can catch different kinds of errors.

46.4. Catching uncaught exceptions

If an uncaught exception gets thrown during the execution of your program,
your program will crash.

To solve this, you listen for the uncaughtException event on the

process object: [Link]('uncaughtException', (err) => {

[Link]('There was an uncaught error', err)

[Link](1) // mandatory (as per the [Link] docs)

})
You don't need to import the process core module for this, as it's
automatically injected.

46.5. Exceptions with promises

Using promises you can chain different operations, and handle errors at the
end: doSomething1()
.then(doSomething2)

.then(doSomething3)

.catch((err) => [Link](err))

How do you know where the error occurred? You don't really know, but you
can handle errors in each of the functions you call ( doSomethingX ), and
inside the error handler throw a new error, that's going to call the outside
catch handler: const doSomething1 = () => {

// ...

try {

// ...

} catch (err) {

// ... handle it locally

throw new Error([Link])

// ...

To be able to handle errors locally without handling them in the function we

call, we can break the chain. You can create a function in each then() and
process the exception: doSomething1()
 .then(() => {

return doSomething2().catch((err) => {

// handle error

throw err // break the chain!

})

})

.then(() => {

return doSomething3().catch((err) => {

// handle error

throw err // break the chain!

})

})

.catch((err) => [Link](err))

46.6. Error handling with async/await

Using async/await, you still need to catch errors, and you do it this way:
async function someFunction( ) {

try {

await someOtherFunction()

} catch (err) {

[Link]([Link])

}
47. Build an HTTP Server
Here is a sample Hello World HTTP web server: const http =

require('http')

const port = [Link] || 3000

const server = [Link]((req, res) => {

[Link] = 200

[Link]('Content-Type', 'text/html')

[Link]('<h1>Hello, World!</h1>')

})

[Link](port, () => {

[Link](`Server running at port ${port}`)

})

Let's analyze it briefly. We include the http module.

We use the module to create an HTTP server.

The server is set to listen on the specified port, 3000 . When the server is
ready, the listen callback function is called.

The callback function we pass is the one that's going to be executed upon
every request that comes in. Whenever a new request is received, the
request event is called, providing two objects: a request (an
 [Link] object) and a response (an [Link]

object).

request provides the request details. Through it, we access the request
headers and request data.

response is used to populate the data we're going to return to the client.

In this case with

[Link] = 200

we set the statusCode property to 200, to indicate a successful response.

We also set the Content-Type header: [Link]('Content-Type',

'text/html')

and we end close the response, adding the content as an argument to

end() : [Link]('<h1>Hello, World!</h1>')
48. Making HTTP requests with
[Link]
48.1. Perform a GET Request
There are many ways to perform an HTTP GET request in [Link],
depending on the abstraction level you want to use.

The simplest way to perform an HTTP request using [Link] is to use the
Axios library: const axios = require('axios')

axios

.get('[Link]

.then((res) => {

[Link](`statusCode: ${[Link]}`)

[Link](res)

})

.catch((error) => {

[Link](error)

})

However, Axios requires the use of a 3rd party library.

A GET request is possible just using the [Link] standard modules,

although it's more verbose than the option above: const https =

require('https')
const options = {

hostname: '[Link]',

port: 443,

path: '/todos',

method: 'GET',

const req = [Link](options, (res) => {

[Link](`statusCode: ${[Link]}`)

[Link]('data', (d) => {

[Link](d)

})

})

[Link]('error', (error) => {

[Link](error)

})

[Link]()

48.2. Perform a POST Request

Similar to making an HTTP GET request, you can use the Axios library to
perform a POST request: const axios = require('axios')
axios

.post('[Link] {

todo: 'Buy the milk',

})

.then((res) => {

[Link](`statusCode: ${[Link]}`)

[Link](res)

})

.catch((error) => {

[Link](error)

})

Or alternatively, use [Link] standard modules: const https =

require('https')

const data = [Link]({

todo: 'Buy the milk',

})

const options = {

hostname: '[Link]',

port: 443,

path: '/todos',

method: 'POST',

headers: {

'Content-Type': 'application/json',

'Content-Length': [Link],
 },

const req = [Link](options, (res) => {

[Link](`statusCode: ${[Link]}`)

[Link]('data', (d) => {

[Link](d)

})

})

[Link]('error', (error) => {

[Link](error)

})

[Link](data)

[Link]()

48.3. PUT and DELETE

PUT and DELETE requests use the same POST request format - you just
need to change the [Link] value to the appropriate method.
49. Get HTTP request body data
Here is how you can extract the data that was sent as JSON in the request
body.

If you are using Express, that's quite simple: use the [Link]()

middleware which is available in Express v4.16.0 onwards.

For example, to get the body of this request: const axios =

require('axios')

[Link]('[Link] {

todo: 'Buy the milk',

})

This is the matching server-side code: const express =

require('express')

const app = express()

[Link](

[Link]({

extended: true,

})

)
[Link]([Link]())

[Link]('/todos', (req, res) => {

[Link]([Link])

})

If you're not using Express and you want to do this in vanilla [Link], you
need to do a bit more work, of course, as Express abstracts a lot of this for
you.

The key thing to understand is that when you initialize the HTTP server
using [Link]() , the callback is called when the server got all
the HTTP headers, but not the request body.

The request object passed in the connection callback is a stream.

So, we must listen for the body content to be processed, and it's processed
in chunks.

We first get the data by listening to the stream data events, and when the
data ends, the stream end event is called, once: const server =

[Link]((req, res) => {

// we can access HTTP headers

[Link]('data', (chunk) => {

[Link](`Data chunk available: ${chunk}`)

})

[Link]('end', () => {
 // end of data

})

})

So to access the data, assuming we expect to receive a string, we must

concatenate the chunks into a string when listening to the stream data ,
and when the stream end , we parse the string to JSON: const server =

[Link]((req, res) => {

let data = ''

[Link]('data', (chunk) => {

data += chunk

})

[Link]('end', () => {

[Link]([Link](data).todo) // 'Buy the milk'

[Link]()

})

})

Starting from [Link] v10 a for await .. of syntax is available for use.
It simplifies the example above and makes it look more linear: const

server = [Link](async (req, res) => {

const buffers = []

for await (const chunk of req) {

[Link](chunk)

const data = [Link](buffers).toString()

 [Link]([Link](data).todo) // 'Buy the milk'

[Link]()

})
Conclusion
Thanks a lot for reading this book.

For more, head over to [Link].

Send any feedback, errata or opinions at flavio@[Link]