Chapter 1

Installing Node

WHAT’S IN THIS CHAPTER?

  • Getting Node up and running
  • Installing Node Package Manager (NPM)
  • Using NPM to install, uninstall, and update packages

At the European JSConf in 2009, Ryan Dahl, a young programmer, presented a project he had been working on. This project was a platform that combined Google’s V8 JavaScript engine, an event loop, and a low-level I/O API. This project was not like other server-side JavaScript platforms where all the I/O primitives were event-driven and there was no way around it. By leveraging the power and simplicity of JavaScript, this project turned the difficult task of writing event-driven server-side applications into an easy one. The project received a standing ovation and has since then been met with unprecedented growth, popularity, and adoption.

The project was named Node.js and is now known to developers simply as Node. Node provides a purely event-driven, non-blocking infrastructure for building highly concurrent software.

NOTE Node allows you to easily construct fast and scalable network services.

Ever since its introduction, Node has received attention from some of the biggest players in the industry. They have used Node to deploy networked services that are fast and scalable. Node is so attractive for several reasons.

One reason is JavaScript. JavaScript is the most widely used programming language on the planet. Most web programmers are used to writing JavaScript in the browser, and the server is a natural extension ...

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