By reading this book, you will learn the following: The "Node way":
How to use the right point of view when approaching a Node.js design problem. You will learn, for example, how different traditional design patterns look in Node.js, or how to design modules that do only one thing.
A set of patterns to solve common Node.js design and coding problems:
You will be presented with a "Swiss army knife" of patterns, ready-to-use in order to efficiently solve your everyday development and design problems.
How to write modular and efficient Node.js applications:
You will gain an understanding of the basic building blocks and principles of writing large and well-organized Node.js applications and you will be able to apply these principles to novel problems that don't fall within the scope of existing patterns.
Throughout the book, you will be presented with several real-life libraries and technologies, such as LevelDb, Redis, RabbitMQ, ZMQ, Express, and many others. They will be used to demonstrate a pattern or technique, and besides making the example more useful, these will also give you great exposure to the Node.js ecosystem and its set of solutions.
Whether you use or plan to use Node.js for your work, your side project, or for an open source project, recognizing and using well-known patterns and techniques will allow you to use a common language when sharing your code and design, and on top of that, it will help you get a better understanding of the future of Node.js and how to make your own contributions a part of it.
What this book covers
Chapter 1, Welcome to the Node.js Platform, serves as an introduction to the world of Node.js application design by showing the patterns at the core of the platform itself. It covers the Node.js ecosystem and its philosophy, a short introduction to Node.js version 6, ES2015, and the reactor pattern.
Chapter 2, Node.js Essential Patterns, introduces the first steps towards asynchronous coding and design patterns with Node.js discussing and comparing callbacks and the event emitter (observer pattern). This chapter also introduces the Node.js module system and the related module pattern.
Chapter 3, Asynchronous Control Flow Patterns with Callbacks, introduces a set of patterns and techniques for efficiently handling asynchronous control flow in Node.js. This chapter teaches you how to mitigate the "callback hell" problem using plain JavaScript and the async library.
Chapter 4, Asynchronous Control Flow Patterns with ES2015 and Beyond, progresses with the exploration of asynchronous control flows introducing Promises, Generators, and Async- Await.
Chapter 5, Coding with Streams, dives deep into one of the most important patterns in Node.js: streams. It shows you how to process data with transform streams and how to combine them into different layouts.
Chapter 6, Design Patterns, deals with a controversial topic: traditional design patterns in Node.js. It covers the most popular conventional design patterns and shows you how unconventional they might look in Node.js. It also introduces the reader to some emerging design patterns that are specific only to JavaScript and Node.js.
Chapter 7, Wiring Modules, analyzes the different solutions for linking the modules of an application together. In this chapter, you will learn design patterns such as Dependency Injection and service locator.
Chapter 8, Universal JavaScript for Web Applications, explores one of the most interesting capabilities of modern JavaScript web applications: being able to share application code between the frontend and the backend. Across this chapter we learn the basic principles of Universal JavaScript by building a simple web application with React, Webpack, and Babel.
Chapter 9, Advanced Asynchronous Recipes, takes a problem-solution approach to show you how some common coding and design challenges can be solved with ready-to-use solutions.
Chapter 10, Scalability and Architectural Patterns, teaches you the basic techniques and patterns for scaling a Node.js application.
Chapter 11, Messaging and Integration Patterns, presents the most important messaging patterns, teaching you how to build and integrate complex distributed systems using ZMQ and AMQP.
