full-stack-open

• npm: tool used for managing JavaScript packages
• React applications: create vite@latest -- --template react
• Backend exercises: npm init, npm install express (library)
• Build the backend on top of NodeJS, which is a JavaScript runtime based on Google's Chrome V8 JavaScript engine
• Interactive node-repl: https://nodejs.org/docs/latest-v18.x/api/repl.html

json-server

• json-server is a mock REST API server built with Node.js
• It allows you to create a fake backend quickly using just a db.json file. Use case: Quick API mocking, demos, front-end development without backend

Node.js

• Node.js is a JavaScript runtime (built on Chrome’s V8 engine)
• It allows you to run JavaScript on the server side
• Libraries to ease server-side development with Node: ExpressJS (most popular), NestJS Use case: Real applications, production APIs, complex logic, integrations

REST

Representational State Transfer, aka REST Operations on resources:

• GET: fetch a single or all resources
• POST: creates a new resource based on the request data
• DELETE: removes
• PUT: replaces the entire identified resource with the request data
• PATCH: replaces a part of the identified resource with the request data Properties related to request types:
• GET, HEAD: safety
• All requests except POST: idempotency

Testing backend

• Command line program curl
• Postman: Postman Desktop, also on VS Code extension
• VS Code REST Client plugin: requests/file.rest with REST client requests; by clicking Send Request text, the REST client will execute the HTTP request and the response from the server is opened in the editor. instructions documentation

Debugging Node applications

• Visual Studio Code's
• Chrome developer console: start the application with node --inspect index.js