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Node.js

Node.js (often simply called node) is a general purpose programming environment built on top of Google's V8 JavaScript engine.

🚧 This guide is provided for historical purposes—new CfA projects should not use Node.js 🚧

Install

Download and run the installer for your system from http://nodejs.org/download/

You now have node and npm installed in your $PATH.

Using node

node is the program interpreter. You can run a javascript program:

$ node program.js

You can also start node in interactive (REPL) mode:

$ node

Using npm

npm is used to install modules and to publish your own. It is reasonably well documented at the npm website.

In brief, you can find modules to use at npm.im with the search feature. Then, you can install them:

$ npm install foo

Modules are installed in the node_modules/ directory in your project.

When you first clone a project using node, you need to run npm install which will install all of the project's module dependencies specified in the package.json file in the project root.

Running node programs

Typically this is done via

$ npm start

When you first clone a repository, make sure to run $ npm install in the directory to download all of the dependencies.

When creating a node program, you can set the start script by added it to your package.json like this:

{
  "scripts": {
    "start": "node index.js"
    }
}

Testing node programs

Typically this is done via

$ npm test

When you first clone a repository, make sure to run $ npm install in the directory to download all of the dependencies.

When creating a node program, you can set the test script by added it to your package.json like this:

{
  "scripts": {
    "test": "node test.js"
    }
}

Scripting tasks (builds, testing, etc)

In addition to start and test scripts mentioned above, npm includes a way to run other tasks related to your program by adding them to the scripts property in package.json. This is a powerful and standard way to add functionality to node programs. Read this excellent blog post to learn more about this.

package.json & configuration

package.json has lots of fun stuff for your project. All of the fields are optional. A great resource for exploring what fields are available is package.json.nodejitsu.com/