First Day - Setting up my environment and watching intro videos on YouTube

Today I :

• Set up my environment
• Watched intro videos on APIs and Node.js

Setting up my Environement

I have set up a local GIT repository for my Back-End course work. I have also decided to use VS Code as my development environment.

My repository will have separate folders for the course assignments:

• coursework
• diary: I have set up a Hugo blog site to keep my learning diary.
• project

I will be skipping the Git tutorials as I have some Git experience from another course.

I have already set up Git on my machine. I made an initial commit to my new Git ropo, and pushed to GitHub.

Back-end

REST Intro

Watched this video on YouTube.

• Face book has a REST api. I tried the sample on the video, but I don’t get the same result. Instead, I’m getting an error saying An access token is required to request this resource. I have some idea what this means. Would need to make the request with an API client, such as Postman? I googled this document on using the Facebook Graph API; maybe I’ll have a loot at it later.
• The google maps api sample doesn’t work either, error message saying an API key is required for each request.
• Instagram API example is also outdated. Just realised I am watching a 2014 video.
• ProgrammableWeb is an API directory.
• OAuth is used to authenticate to many APIs.

NodeJS Tutorial

Project home page: NodeJs.org

This course uses version 12. I believe I have this version already installed on my machine.

% node --version
v0.12.7

Tutorial video. OK this is a long one…

Create an HTTP server from scratch without Express, then deploy to Heroku. Covers modules such as as path, url, fs, events.

Node is a JavaScript Runtime.

Recommended to know first:

• HTTP (status codes, headers, etc..)
• JSON
• Arrow Functions
• Promises
• MVC Pattern

Learned that the best use cases and types of projects for Node are those that are not CPU intensive:

• REST API & Microservices
• Realtime services (Chat, Live Updates)
• CRUD Apps (Blogs, Shopping carts, Social Networks)
• Tools & Utilities
• etc..

NPM - Node Package manager

• npm init Generates a package.json file
  • Lists all dependencies
  • Packages are stored in the node_modules folder
• npm install express Installs a package locally
• npm install -g nodemon Installs a package globally

The tutorial project

• Created a new folder coursework/node_crash_course
• npm init
• npm install uuid

Npm did not add the package dependencies in the package.json file. I tried with –save but nothing happens. I decided to update my npm .. but it didn’t work without updating node, too. I’ll probably have some problems later on as I am not using the recommended version 12. I don’t want to spend time on this right now. Watching this video is slow…

Dev dependencies

npm install -D nodemon

Created a .gitignore with folder node_modules. No need to check these into VCS. npm install will recreate the directory.