In this section, we will set up our environment required for our journey ahead. You already installed Node.js and TypeScript globally. At the time of writing, the available version of Node.js was 9.2.0 and TypeScript was 2.6.2.

VS Code is one of the best available editors right now for TypeScript. By default, VS Code TypeScript displays warnings on incorrect code, which helps us to write better code. Linters, debugging, build issues, errors, and so on are provided out of the box by VS Code. It has supports for JSDoc, sourcemaps, setting different out-files for files that are generated, hiding derived JavaScript files, and so on. It has support for auto-imports...

TypeScript originated from shortcomings in JavaScript development with the advent of using JavaScript for large-scale applications. TypeScript introduced a JavaScript compiler with presets of syntactical language extensions, class-based programming, and ways to convert extensions into regular JavaScript. TypeScript became extremely popular as it introduced type safety in JavaScript, which happens to be one of the most flexible languages ever. This enables JavaScript to be a more object-oriented and compile safe language. TypeScript is more of a superset of ES standards, which enables developers to write cleaner, easy-to-refactor, and upgradable code. In this section, we will go through various primary topics of TypeScript, which are essential for our journey ahead. TypeScript is JavaScript with type annotations. TypeScript has a transpiler and type checker...

Node.js has evolved over the years and has now become the go-to technology for anyone who wants to embrace microservices. Node.js was created to solve the massive I/O scaling problem, which when applied to our microservice design will result in a match made in heaven. The package manager for Node.js has more modules than Maven, RubyGems, and NuGet, which can be used directly and save lots of productive hours. Characteristics such as an asynchronous nature, event-driven I/O, and non-blocking mode make it one of the best solutions for creating high-end, efficient performance, real-time applications. When applied to microservices, it will be able to handle an extreme amount of load with low response times and low infrastructure. Let's look at one of the success stories of Node.js and microservices.

PayPal, seeing the trending Node.js, decided to go with Node...

Let's start by writing our first microservice. Based on the previous topics, we will construct our first microservice with best practices and the widely used node_modules. We will use:

So, open up a Terminal and create one Node project with a default package.json. Follow these steps. The full source code for reference is available in the first-microservice folder in the extracted source:

1. First of all, we will download the preceding...

In this chapter, we had a primary introduction to some of the most fundamental concepts of Node.js and TypeScript that are essential for making scalable applications suitable for enterprise needs. We set up our primary environment and learned about Docker, PM2, and NGINX. At the end, we created our traditional Hello World microservice the TypeScript way in Node.js.

In the next chapter, we are going to learn the fundamentals of reactive programming, the advantages of reactive programming, and how you can do reactive programming in Node.js. We will see various operators available in reactive programming, which shorten and streamline our day-to-day development. We will see a combination of traditional SOA-based orchestration and reactive processes, and go through various situations to see which approach fits where.