Professional Visual Studio 2017

19Node.js Development

• Understanding what Node.js is
• Creating a Node.js application
• Installing packages using Node Package Manager
• Working with task runners

WROX.COM CODE DOWNLOADS FOR THIS CHAPTER

The wrox.com code downloads for this chapter can be found at www.wrox.com by searching for this book’s ISBN number (978-1-119-40458-3). The code and any related support files are located in their own folder for this chapter.

For many web developers, what is about to be suggested might seem, well, bizarre. But what if you could take the client-side programming language that you know and love (JavaScript) and use it to develop the server side of your web application? That is exactly what node.js (also known as just Node) enables you to do. What’s more, Visual Studio 2017 includes a number of features that are aimed at increasing the productivity of Node developers. Those features are covered in this chapter.

GETTING STARTED WITH NODE.JS

Node.js (Node) is server-side JavaScript. To people who are used to seeing JavaScript running in a browser, this might seem a little odd. But when you get right down to it, JavaScript is just a language. There is nothing inherent in the language specification to suggest that it couldn’t be used in a web server.

What makes Node something worth looking at is that it’s light-weight and performs very well. The performance is the result of, among other things, some design decisions that distinguish it from other web servers. Probably the biggest choice ...