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Setting up your node.js Project

The following guides are typical ways of starting a new node.js project from scratch. We will also be tackling a little bit about the other helper components in your project.

Set your node.js version

For this training we will be using the latest LTS (long-term-support) version of node v8.11.4.

nvm use v8.11.4
nvm ls

Create a new project directory

cd ~/
mkdir nodejs-training
cd nodejs-training

Initialize

node.js uses the Node Package Manager for managing your project metadata and codebase. In order to initialize your project run:

npm init

This will create a new file called package.json which contains some important details about your project.

{
  "name": "nodejs-training",
  "version": "0.0.1",
  "description": "Practicing node.js",
  "main": "index.js",
  "scripts": {
    "test": "echo \"Error: no test specified\" && exit 1"
  },
  "author": "Alvin Delagon",
  "license": "ISC"
}

One interesting package.json file can be found in nodejs-qe-gitbook repository:

{
  "name": "nodejs-qe-gitbook",
  "version": "0.0.1",
  "dependencies": {
    "gitbook-cli": "^2.3.2",
    "gitbook-plugin-exercises": "^3.0.0",
    "gitbook-plugin-runkit": "0.0.1"
  },
  "description": "A gitbook for QE Programming Foundation Training (nodejs)",
  "main": "index.js",
  "devDependencies": {},
  "scripts": {
    "postinstall": "node_modules/gitbook-cli/bin/gitbook.js install",
    "start": "node_modules/gitbook-cli/bin/gitbook.js serve"
  },
  "repository": {
    "type": "git",
    "url": "git@github.com:adelagon/javascript-nodejs-gitbook.git"
  },
  "keywords": [
    "training",
    "node.js",
    "qe"
  ],
  "author": "Alvin Delagon",
  "license": "ISC"
}

More details about the package.json file can be found here: https://docs.npmjs.com/files/package.json

Once you have initialized your directory, we may now proceed with the next steps.

Installing libraries

node.js has a huge collection of third party libraries in hosted in https://www.npmjs.com. Before you implement anything, make sure that you search the repository first if there's anything you can reuse.

For now, we'll be installing the request library (https://www.npmjs.com/package/request), we will be using this on the next sections. You can install packages this way:

npm install --save request

This pull the request library from npmjs, installs it on node_modules directory and adds it as a dependency your package.json file.