Prepping for Node JS

I've got a philosophy about code (that is often valid in the wider world) that the context of an action is as important as the action itself. As much as possible in this blog, I'm going to attempt to share the context and tool-chain I'm using. In the next few posts I'll be exploring building a web app with Node JS. Before you can go out and write a line of code though, you need a dev environment. These are the steps I used to create mine. (I'm working from memory here - sorry. In future posts, I'll write things down as I do them.)

• Install Oracle VirtualBox
• Download Debian Squeeze and install it in a virtual machine in VirtualBox

I decided not to run Node on Windows because I have a slight aversion to Cygwin. Also, I like the portability of a virtual machine. Theoretically, you can save the VM state, and move it to another computer, clone it to multiple computers, whatever.

Of course, a bare Linux installation is almost completely worthless. First, I gave my user sudo access (?!! You would think this would be a default. You would be wrong.), and installed the following:

• Chrome
• curl (because Node programmers aren't allowed to use a browser, y'know)
• git (programmers should feel naked without some sort of source control)
• NodeJS
• NPM
• MongoDB
• CouchDB

Yes, I did download both MongoDb and CouchDb. I currently have zero experience with NoSQL databases, and I wanted to try these two out. Probably be using CouchDb the most though, because of the awesome stuff they're developing over at CouchBase.

So far, the NPM packages I've installed are

• Express (with templating language Jade)
• node-uuid (need a unique id? Here you go!)
• socket.io (awe-inspiring ease of communication)

Most of the action in the upcoming posts will center around socket.io.

EDIT: I also installed Expresso, later. Can't forget testing!