Introduction

In the previous chapter, we learned about how HTML becomes the DOM and how to use JavaScript to query and manipulate the content of a page.

Before JavaScript, all pages were static. After Netscape introduced the scripting environment to its browser, developers started using it to create dynamic and responsive applications. The applications started to become more and more complex but the only place where JavaScript was running was inside the browser. Then, in 2009, Ryan Dahl, the original developer of Node.js, decided to create a way to run JavaScript on the server side, simplifying the web developer's life by allowing them to build applications without having to depend on other languages.

In this chapter, you will learn how Node.js works and how to use it to create scripts using JavaScript. You will learn about the basics of the Node.js core APIs, where to find their documentation, and how to use their read-eval-print loop (REPL) command line.

With the skills...