What is Node?
Is a runtime for built on top of Chrome’s V8, allows you to develop apps in JavaScript outside the browser. It’s a Single threaded non blocking and asynchronous, achieved by the use of an event loop at the core of Node.
Use case:
- API’s and servers
- Databases (yes some DB’s are built in Node)
- CLI’s
- Build tools
- Automations
- Basic Scripting
- GPU shopping bots
Install
which node
*Some codes work on the browser but not on node, because there a lot of features that defer from one to another.
Like the browser, node comes with some practical globals for us to use in our applications
Common
- global, think of this as like window, but for node (DON’T ABUSE IT)
- __dirname this global is a String value that points to the directory name of the file it’s used in
- filename like direname, it too relative to the file it’s written in. A String value that points to the file name.
- process A swiss army knife global. An Object that contains all the context you need about the current program being executed. Things from env vars, to what machine you’re on.
- export module require these globals are used fro creating and exposing modules throughout your app. We’ll get to modules in a second.