There are hardly any good books on node.js available in market, but this is an exception. I went through blogs and posts just to find a good node.js book.Since i am pretty excited about learning node.js, i did not want my experience to be soured by "not so good" book. I had almost given up my search until i found this one. Reading it is a breeze and you do not want to put it down. Examples are mentioned very neatly and they are easy to understand. Just go through car example in first few pages and you will understand about modules, events, promises etc. My request to author would be to write more such books.

The book, Nodejs-Blueprints is divided up well into 12 chapters. Each of these chapters demonstrates a practical project showing the developer how to utilize todays Javascript language and frameworks in conjunction with node.js to develop modern web based applications.From the Preface of the book, "The book is for intermediate developers. It teaches you how to use popular Node.js libraries and frameworks. So, good JavaScript knowledge is required."This is certainly true, you need to have an awareness and understanding of javascript before tackling the examples. For example in Chapter 3, "Writing a Blog Application with Node.js and AngularJS" the author introduces the fundamentals of AngularJS but only within the confines of the space of this book and context of this example. A previous understanding of AngularJS would be of great benefit here.The publishers do provide a separate code sample file for download, as most programming books do these days. Although the code samples should be downloaded, it is preferable to type the code into your editor to become more experienced at writing error free code.Chapter 1 introduces Node.js, a javascript technology, and a number of programming paradigms specifically applicable to node.js.Of specific relevance is the architectural discussion and the very clear demonstration of developing modular code. This becomes important in the later chapters of testing and building your application.Chapter 2 introduces the first of the example applications, a basic web site using nodejs and ExpressJS.As other reviewers, and the author, have noted there are differences between the book and the current technology implementation of Express.js and Node.js. The author will provide an updated chapter highlighting the differences.Chapters 3 & 4 introduce the fundamentals of real world applications developed using Node.js. A blogging application and a Live Chat application. In particular the live chat application highlights the "real time" capabilities of Node.js and socket.io.Chapters 5 through 7 continue to introduce and develop various types of applications, from Social Network feeds to Command Line tools.However, for me personally, Chapters 8 & 9 in particular delivered the most value in the book.Complexity in modern web application development has increased significantly due to the newer programming technologies available, modern architectural styles (ie modular code, even in CSS with LESS and SASS), dependency management during the build process, automated build, test driven development and so forth. Each of these aspects is critical to a successful deployment of your application.Reading the chapters on 'build' and 'test' was like lifting a dark cloud of confusion. The introduction to build tools Grunt & Gulp in Chapter 8 and incremental additions to the base code made it very clear and easy to follow what was happening, right down to triggering the build by watching for changes to the code files. By simply following the code samples in the book I was able to set up automated testing using Grunt without errors.Introduction of the test suites Jasmine and Mocha in Chapter 9 was equally as clear and concise, incrementally building on a basic script. The introduction of testing using a "headless browser" in the form of PhantomJS, allows the developer to test page visits, button clicks and sending of forms.Chapter 9 closes out by introducing DalekJS, a Nodejs module which allows developers to test real world browsers, such as Chrome, Firefox and Internet Explorer. As the user has choice of their web browser today, it is important to be able to test your code in as many environments as possible.Gaining a thorough understanding of the build and test processes as described by these 2 chapters will provide a solid foundation for writing great web applications.Chapter 10 explores the world of modular CSS by firstly explaining and then introducing CSS Pre-Processors. There are a number available today and the most popular are introduced.REST stands for Representational State Transfer and it is an architectural principle of the Web. In most of the cases, the server has resources that need to be created, fetched, updated, or deleted. The REST APIs provide mechanisms to perform all these operations.Chapter 11 introduces and develops a restful API to manage an online library. As with all previous chapters, an incremental approach to developing the scripts and databases leads to a working sample of REST based web application.The last chapter, chapter 12, highlights the development of a desktop program. Nodejs is typically known for its web based applications, but in this chapter a more traditional desktop program to read files on the local computer is developed using node-webkit.Overall I would rate the book 5 stars. I found the incremental approach to the code samples very easy to follow and although I did not build all the sample applications, those I did develop, I did so without errors.As noted above the chapters on build and test, such a critical part of todays web development world, were very clearly explained and demonstrated. This made this book a very valuable resource in my development tool set and one I shall keep close by.Publisher Link : http://www.packtpub.com/nodejs-blueprints/book

I just finished reading the book "Node.js Blueprints". If you are discovering NodeJS is a very good addition to your research. After a brief review of the fundamentals, the author gives you recipes on various topics, especially how to use Angular with Node and a database, or create a chat with Socket.IO, etc.I like very much the chapter about Node as Command-line Tool, where the author explains how to connect to Flickr with OAuth.You can read an introduction about Grunt and Gulp, again the fundamentals : how to minify your code, watching for changes, testing, ... Even, how to develop an desktop application with Node.I think this book is a great corpus of representative samples of what you can do with Node.

I chose this book because I like Javascript very much, but I'm not familiar with Node.js, so it was an interesting read.The author chose the best way to teach Node.js (in fact, I think this is the best way to teach anything, and keep the reader's attention): by real-life examples. These examples are very good, they show the reader how to deal with real-life problems like interacting with a MySQL database, implementing a blog engine, implementing a REST API, and creating desktop apps.I definitely recommend this book to everyone who know Javascript well, and want to know more about Node.js.

Node.js Blueprints is addressed to people who know JavaScript and want to use it from the server side too.The book starts with a chapter on some programming paradigms that are currently used on the Node.js land. Patterns such as inter-module communication or how the asynchronous nature of Node works.The following chapters are mainly concerned with the most important libraries on the Node.js ecosystem. The first library the author chose to present us is Express (probably expected). We go through a basic site while learning Express. The author, along with every JS library, walks us through a tutorial with a sample web application. He continues with chapters on Angular and sample blog, socket.io and chat app, backbone and to-do app, ember and social feed app.Apart from the above libraries there is material on automation, testing, dynamics CSS, REST API and Node.js desktop apps.Suitable for those who want a start on Node.js and its ecosystem, Node.js Blueprints is a pretty good book. The author’s approach with example web apps on each library is very good. Every chapter is clear while after finishing it you have learned what you need to start and decide whether you want to dive further into.Furthermore, the code of the book is available from Packt Publishing. Care, though, since there are some (understandable) errors.Recommended!