Category: Windows install and configuration

One of my friends asked me what is Node and also how do you install and test to make sure it is working.

Well, Node is in essence a javascript server side environment that allows you to write code that will allow the event model to handle requests very quickly since it does not handle the I/O (well almost of all of the functions within node do not!) so there is no-blocking of code.

Node has a very quick and capable http class that allows for the user to create a server that is capable of doing some very quick responses to multiple connections.

To install Node you just need to do this in ubuntu

sudo -s
apt-get install python-software-properties
add-apt-repository ppa:chris-lea/node.js
apt-get update
apt-get install nodejs
exit

the first line allows you to be the root and thus the next commands are as the user root.

Or if you are using windows just download the executable from here

To test the node to make sure it is working with a basic “Hello world!” example if you save this below as helloworld.js.

var http = require("http");
// create the http server function req'uest, res'ult
http.createServer(function (req, res) 
{
    // 200 = means http response code of found page, then a array of the content type
    res.writeHead(200, {'Content-Type' : 'text/plain'});
    res.end('Hello world!');  // write out the text
}).listen(8080,'127.0.0.1');
// listen on port 8080 on the ip address 127.0.0.1
console.log('We have started, check your browser on http://127.0.0.1:8080/');

I am using a higher number than 1024 for the port because below that you need to be a root user or administrator on windows to allow anything to connect to those port numbers.

So if you now run the program with the javascript file above as the second parameter

node helloworld.js

and then if you open your browser at 127.0.0.1:8080 then you will see

Hello world!