Preface
Opa Application Development dives into all the concepts and components required to build a web application with Opa. The first half of this book shows the basic building blocks that you will need to develop an Opa application, including the syntax of Opa, web development aspects, client and server communication, as well as slicing, plugins, databases, and so on.
Opa is a full-stack open source web development framework for JavaScript that lets you write secure and scalable web applications. It generates the standard Node.js and MongoDB applications, natively supports HTML5 and CSS, and automates many aspects of modern web application programming. It handles all aspects of web programming written in one consistent language and is compiled to web standards.
This book is a practical, hands-on guide that provides you with a number of step-by-step exercises. It covers almost all the aspects of developing a web application with Opa, which will help you take advantage of the real power of Opa to build secure and powerful web applications rapidly.
What this book covers
Chapter 1, Getting Started with Opa, introduces how to install and set up an Opa development environment.
Chapter 2, Basic Syntax, covers the basic syntax of Opa.
Chapter 3, Developing Web Applications, introduces the fundamental knowledge about developing a web application with Opa.
Chapter 4, Using Bootstrap, introduces how to use Bootstrap in Opa when developing a web application.
Chapter 5, Communicating Between Client and Server, covers client and server slicing and communicating.
Chapter 6, Binding with Other Languages, explains how to bind JavaScript and Node.js to Opa.
Chapter 7, Working with Databases, explains everything about storing, updating, and querying data in a database with MongoDB as a backend.
Chapter 8, Internationalization, introduces the internationalization approach of Opa.
Chapter 9, Building a Chat Application, explains how to build a web chat application with Opa.
Chapter 10, Building a Game – Pacman, explains how to handle image and audio using a canvas when building a Pacman game.
Chapter 11, Building a Social Mobile Application – LiveRoom, explains how to build a social mobile application with Opa.
What you need for this book
Required knowledge for this book is as follows:
Basic knowledge about HTML and CSS
Basic knowledge about JavaScript
Some programming experience
Software required for this book is as follows:
Node.js (http://www.nodejs.org/)
The Opa framework (http://opalang.org/)
MongoDB (http://www.mongodb.org/)
A text editor tool, SublimeText (http://www.sublimetext.com/) is recommended.
Who this book is for
This book is written for web developers who want to get started with the Opa framework and who want to build web applications with it. Web development experience is assumed and would be helpful for understanding this book.
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Code words in text are shown as follows: "We can include other contexts through the use of the include directive."
A block of code is set as follows:
type Student = {string name, int age, float score}
Student stu = { name:"li", age:28, score:80.0}When we wish to draw your attention to a particular part of a code block, the relevant lines or items are set in bold:
type Student = {string name, int age, float score}
Student stu = { name:"li", age:28, score:80.0}New terms and important words are shown in bold. Words that you see on the screen, in menus or dialog boxes for example, appear in the text like this: "Clicking on the Next button moves you to the next screen".
Note
Warnings or important notes appear in a box like this.
Tip
Tips and tricks appear like this.
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