MEAN Web Development Master real-time web application development using a mean combination of MongoDB, Express, AngularJS, and Node.js Amos Q. Haviv BIRMINGHAM - MUMBAI MEAN Web Development Copyright © 2014 Packt Publishing All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embedded in critical articles or reviews. Every effort has been made in the preparation of this book to ensure the accuracy of the information presented. However, the information contained in this book is sold without warranty, either express or implied. Neither the author, nor Packt Publishing, and its dealers and distributors will be held liable for any damages caused or alleged to be caused directly or indirectly by this book. Packt Publishing has endeavored to provide trademark information about all of the companies and products mentioned in this book by the appropriate use of capitals. However, Packt Publishing cannot guarantee the accuracy of this information. First published: September 2014 Production reference: 1190914 Published by Packt Publishing Ltd. Livery Place 35 Livery Street Birmingham B3 2PB, UK. ISBN 978-1-78398-328-5 www.packtpub.com Cover image by Sidhart Ravishankar ([email protected]) [ FM-2 ] Credits Author Project Coordinator Amos Q. Haviv Shipra Chawhan Reviewers Proofreaders Clay Diffrient Simran Bhogal Liran Tal Ameesha Green Vikram Tiwari Indexers Yutaka Yamaguchi Hemangini Bari Mariammal Chettiyar Commissioning Editor Edward Gordon Tejal Soni Acquisition Editor Production Coordinators Richard Harvey Adonia Jones Komal Ramchandani Content Development Editor Neil Alexander Cover Work Adonia Jones Technical Editor Ankita Thakur Copy Editors Roshni Banerjee Sarang Chari [ FM-3 ] About the Author Amos Q. Haviv is a software developer, technical consultant, and the creator of MEAN.IO and MEAN.JS. He has been a full-stack developer for almost a decade and worked for multiple start-ups and enterprise companies. He now works with various platforms, frameworks, and programming languages, including the .NET framework, Python, Scala, Objective-C, and of course, JavaScript. For the past 3 years, Amos has been working with full-stack JavaScript solutions, including Node.js and MongoDB, as well as MVC frontend frameworks, such as AngularJS. In 2013, he created the irst popular boilerplate for MEAN applications, MEAN.IO, and currently continues the development of MEAN solutions at http://meanjs.org. He also gives lectures on advanced web technologies at meetups and conferences, and he guides development teams at various companies. I would like to thank my partner in life, Einat Shahak, for putting up with late night hacking sessions and a messy workroom. She has seen me go through every important turning point of my life with nothing but sheer encouragement and support. I would like to thank my parents for helping me become who I am, and my brothers for always reminding me who I want to be. I would also like to thank my dear friend and colleague Roie Schwaber-Cohen. Without his efforts and support, the development of MEAN as well as this book quite possibly would not have happened. Lastly, I would like to thank the contributors and developers who make the open source community the powerful and creative force that it is. You taught me more than I could have ever imagined. [ FM-4 ] About the Reviewers Clay Diffrient is a software engineer who loves to work at the cutting edge of web technologies. He has worked many times developing applications using the MEAN stack. He focuses his time and effort on the development of software that can help other people learn. His most recent project involving the MEAN stack is a computer adaptive testing system, which is currently under active development. He completed his Bachelor's degree in Computer Science at Brigham Young University-Idaho. He currently works for Instructure, Inc. as a frontend developer on Canvas, an open source learning management system. I want to thank my wonderful wife, Rachael, for her support in all that I do. [ FM-5 ] Liran Tal is a top contributor to the open source MEAN.IO and MEAN.JS full-stack JavaScript frameworks. He is also a certiied MongoDB developer and a technical reviewer of the yet-to-be-published MongoDB Cookbook, Packt Publishing (the name of the book might change in the course of publishing). Being an avid supporter of and contributor to the open source movement, in 2007, he redeined network RADIUS management by establishing daloRADIUS, a world-renowned and industry-leading open source project. Liran currently works at HP Software as an R&D team leader on a combined technology stack, featuring a Drupal-based collaboration platform, Java, Node.js, and MongoDB. At HP Live Network, Liran plays a key role in system architecture design, shaping the technology strategy from planning and development to deployment and maintenance in HP's IaaS cloud. Acting as the technological focal point, he loves mentoring teammates, drives for better code methodology, and seeks out innovative solutions to support business strategies. He has a cum laude (Honors) in his Bachelor's degree in Business and Information Systems Analysis studies and enjoys spending his time with his beloved wife, Tal, and his new born son, Ori. Among other things, his hobbies include playing the guitar, hacking all things on Linux, and continuously experimenting and contributing to open source projects. Vikram Tiwari is currently working as a MEAN stack developer in SilverPush (SilverEdge, Inc.). Using MEAN, he has developed a frontend tool for a mobile advertising management platform. Along with MEAN stack, he also works on Python, Google App Engine, Redis, DynamoDB, Aerospike, and various Google APIs. In his free time, he contributes to various projects on GitHub and manages the developers' community at New Delhi with Google Developers Group. Yutaka Yamaguchi is currently working as a frontend MEAN application developer. Prior to this, he worked as a senior manager in the quality assurance area for 7 years. He lives in Tokyo with his wife and their 4-year old son. He built his irst own home page in 1999, which is written with HTML4 by Notepad, without CSS and JavaScript. He has worked at Six Apart, whose lagship product is the movable type of a social publishing platform dedicated to helping businesses and bloggers manage content and thrive in today's social media landscape. [ FM-6 ] www.PacktPub.com Support iles, eBooks, discount offers, and more You might want to visit www.PacktPub.com for support iles and downloads related to your book. Did you know that Packt offers eBook versions of every book published, with PDF and ePub iles available? You can upgrade to the eBook version at www.PacktPub. com and as a print book customer, you are entitled to a discount on the eBook copy. 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[ FM-7 ] Table of Contents Preface 1 Chapter 1: Introduction to MEAN 7 Three-tier web application development 8 The evolution of JavaScript 9 Introducing MEAN 10 Installing MongoDB 11 Installing MongoDB on Windows 12 Running MongoDB manually 12 Running MongoDB as a Windows Service 13 Installing MongoDB on Mac OS X and Linux 14 Installing MongoDB from binaries 14 Install MongoDB using a package manager 15 Using the MongoDB shell 16 Installing Node.js 17 Installing Node.js on Windows 17 Installing Node.js on Mac OS X 19 Installing Node.js on Linux 20 Running Node.js 20 Introducing NPM 21 Using NPM 21 The installation process of NPM 22 Managing dependencies using the package.json ile 24 Summary 27 Chapter 2: Getting Started with Node.js 29 Introduction to Node.js 30 JavaScript event-driven programming 31 Node.js event-driven programming 33 JavaScript closures 34 Node modules 36