This is part 2 of building a RESTful API with Node.js, Express and ECMAScript 6 using a module approach. Be sure to read part 1 first.

Go to https://github.com/LuukMoret/blog-node-api-express-es6-part2 to see the finished code.

Now that the project setup is done we can start writing our own modules.

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In this 2 part blog post I will explain how to get started with building a RESTful API with Node.js, Express and ECMAScript 6 using a module approach.

Go to https://github.com/LuukMoret/blog-node-api-express-es6-part1 to see the finished code.

Node.js

Node.js is an asynchronous event driven JavaScript runtime, designed to build scalable network applications. Node.js can handle many connections concurrently in contrast to today’s more common concurrency model where OS threads are employed.

Thread-based networking is relatively inefficient and very difficult to use. Furthermore, users of Node are free from worries of dead-locking the process, since there are no locks. Almost no function in Node directly performs I/O, so the process never blocks. Because nothing blocks, scalable systems are very reasonable to develop in Node.

You can read more about Blocking vs Non-Blocking here.

Express

Express is a minimal and flexible Node.js web application framework that provides a robust set of features for web and mobile applications. There are alternatives like Koa and Hapi but Express is definitely the most widely used web framework for node.js today.

ECMAScript 6

ECMAScript is a subset of JavaScript. JavaScript is basically ECMAScript at it’s core but builds upon it. Languages such as ActionScript, JavaScript, JScript all use ECMAScript as its core.

ECMAScript 6, also known as ECMAScript 2015, is the latest version of the ECMAScript standard. ES6 is a significant update to the language, and the first update to the language since ES5 was standardized in 2009. Read more about these new features here.

There is also a fantastic JavaScript Style Guide from Airbnb. If you want to enforce these rules in your project, consider using the airbnb eslint npm package found here .

With the above technologies explained we can start writing our node api!

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In this short tutorial I will explain how to get started with an ASP.NET 5 WebAPI application and how to deploy this in a Docker Container.

ASP.NET 5 is an open source web framework for building modern web applications that can be developed and run on Windows, Linux and the Mac. It includes the MVC 6 framework, which now combines the features of MVC and Web API into a single web programming framework. ASP.NET 5 will also be the basis for SignalR 3 - enabling you to add real time functionality to cloud connected applications. ASP.NET 5 is built on the .NET Core runtime, but it can also be run on the full .NET Framework for maximum compatibility.

Some of the improvements of ASP.NET 5:

• Build and run cross-platform ASP.NET apps on Windows, Mac and Linux
• Built on .NET Core, which supports true side-by-side app versioning
• New tooling that simplifies modern Web development
• Single aligned web stack for Web UI and Web APIs
• Cloud-ready environment-based configuration
• Integrated support for creating and using NuGet packages
• Built-in support for dependency injection
• Ability to host on IIS or self-host in your own process

Docker is a platform for developers and sysadmins to develop, ship, and run applications. Docker lets you quickly assemble applications from components and eliminates the friction that can come when shipping code. Docker lets you get your code tested and deployed into production as fast as possible.

Some of the benefits of Docker:

• Easily build new containers, enable rapid iteration of your applications, and increase the visibility of changes. This helps everyone in your organization understand how an application works and how it is built.
• Docker containers are lightweight and fast! Containers have sub-second launch times, reducing the cycle time of development, testing, and deployment.
• Docker containers run (almost) everywhere. You can deploy containers on desktops, physical servers, virtual machines, into data centers, and up to public and private clouds.
• Since Docker runs on so many platforms, it’s easy to move your applications around. You can easily move an application from a testing environment into the cloud and back whenever you need.
• Docker’s lightweight containers also make scaling up and down fast and easy. You can quickly launch more containers when needed and then shut them down easily when they’re no longer needed.
• Docker containers don’t need a hypervisor, so you can pack more of them onto your hosts. This means you get more value out of every server and can potentially reduce what you spend on equipment and licenses.
• As Docker speeds up your work flow, it gets easier to make lots of small changes instead of huge, big bang updates. Smaller changes mean reduced risk and more uptime.

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