Mastering JavaScript

Table of Contents

Mastering JavaScript

Credits

About the Author

About the Reviewer

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Why subscribe?

Free access for Packt account holders

Preface

What this book covers

What you need for this book

Who this book is for

Conventions

Reader feedback

Customer support

Downloading the example code

Downloading the color images of this book

Errata

Piracy

Questions

1. JavaScript Primer

A little bit of history

How to use this book

Hello World

An overview of JavaScript

Comments

Variables

Constants

Number

String

Undefined values

Booleans

The instanceof operator

Date objects

The + operator

The ++ and -- operators

Boolean operators

Equality

Strict equality using ===

Weak equality using ==

JavaScript types

Automatic semicolon insertion

JavaScript style guide

Whitespaces

Parentheses, line breaks, and braces

Quotes

End of lines and empty lines

Type checking

Type casting

Conditional evaluation

Naming

The eval() method is evil

The strict mode

Enabling the strict mode for an existing code can break it

Package with care

Variables must be declared in strict mode

The eval() function is cleaner in strict mode

Features that are blocked in strict mode

Running JSHint

Summary

2. Functions, Closures, and Modules

A function literal

A function declaration

Functions as data

Scoping

Global scope

Local scope

Function-level scope versus block-level scope

Inline function expressions

Block scopes

Function declarations versus function expressions

The arguments parameter

The this parameter

Invocation as a function

Invocation as a method

Invocation as a constructor

Invocation using apply() and call() methods

Anonymous functions

Anonymous functions while creating an object

Anonymous functions while creating a list

Anonymous functions as a parameter to another function

Anonymous functions in conditional logic

Closures

Timers and callbacks

Private variables

Loops and closures

Modules

Stylistic considerations

Summary

3. Data Structures and Manipulation

Regular expressions

Exact match

Match from a class of characters

Repeated occurrences

Alternatives – OR

Beginning and end

Backreferences

Greedy and lazy quantifiers

Arrays

Maps

Sets

A matter of style

Summary

4. Object-Oriented JavaScript

Understanding objects

Behavior of JavaScript objects

Prototypes

Instance properties versus prototype properties

Inheritance

Getters and setters

Summary

5. JavaScript Patterns

Design patterns

The namespace pattern

The module pattern

ES6 modules

The factory pattern

The mixin pattern

The decorator pattern

The observer pattern

JavaScript Model-View-* patterns

Model-View-Controller

Models

Views

Controllers

The Model-View-Presenter pattern

Model-View-ViewModel

Summary

6. Testing and Debugging

Unit testing

Test-driven development

Behavior-driven development

JavaScript debugging

Syntax errors

Using strict

Runtime exceptions

Console.log and asserts

Chrome DevTools

Summary

7. ECMAScript 6

Shims or polyfills

Transpilers

ES6 syntax changes

Block scoping

Default parameters

Spread and rest

Destructuring

Object literals

Template literals

Maps and Sets

Symbols

Iterators

For..of loops

Arrow functions

Summary

8. DOM Manipulation and Events

DOM

Accessing DOM elements

Accessing specific nodes

Chaining

Traversal and manipulation

Working with browser events

Propagation

jQuery event handling and propagation

Event delegation

The event object

Summary

9. Server-Side JavaScript

An asynchronous evented-model in a browser

Callbacks

Timers

EventEmitters

Modules

Creating modules

npm

Installing packages

JavaScript performance

JavaScript profiling

The CPU profile

The Timeline view

Summary

Index

Mastering JavaScript

Mastering JavaScript

Copyright © 2016 Packt Publishing

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embedded in critical articles or reviews.

Every effort has been made in the preparation of this book to ensure the accuracy of the information presented. However, the information contained in this book is sold without warranty, either express or implied. Neither the author, nor Packt Publishing, and its dealers and distributors will be held liable for any damages caused or alleged to be caused directly or indirectly by this book.

Packt Publishing has endeavored to provide trademark information about all of the companies and products mentioned in this book by the appropriate use of capitals. However, Packt Publishing cannot guarantee the accuracy of this information.

First published: January 2016

Production reference: 1250116

Published by Packt Publishing Ltd.

Livery Place

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Birmingham B3 2PB, UK.

ISBN 978-1-78528-134-1

www.packtpub.com

Credits

Author

Ved Antani

Reviewer

Ivano Malavolta

Commissioning Editor

Sarah Crofton

Acquisition Editor

Kevin Colaco

Content Development Editor

Merint Mathew

Technical Editor

Manthan Raja

Copy Editor

Tasneem Fatehi

Project Coordinator

Francina Pinto

Proofreader

Safis Editing

Indexer

Monica Ajmera Mehta

Production Coordinator

Conidon Miranda

Cover Work

Conidon Miranda

About the Author

Ved Antani is an AVP (engineering) at Myntra. Before Myntra, he worked with Electronic Arts, NetApp, and Oracle. Ved is passionate about programming and has been programming in JavaScript since 2005. He has extensive experience in building scalable systems and mobile applications. Ved is a minimalist, a father, and an avid tea drinker.

I would like to thank my wife, Meghna, for her support. She was always there to encourage and help me when I needed it the most.

About the Reviewer

Ivano Malavolta is a postdoctoral researcher at the Gran Sasso Science Institute (L'Aquila, Italy), and he holds a PhD in computer science from the University of L'Aquila. His research is positioned in three main fields: software architecture, Model-Driven Engineering (MDE), and mobile-enabled systems. He is especially interested in investigating how MDE techniques can be exploited for architecting complex and mobile-enabled software systems at the right level of abstraction. He is the author of more than 40 papers in international journals and peer-reviewed international conferences' proceedings; among them, he has coauthored two articles published in the IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering (TSE), which is considered the leading journal in the field of software engineering. He is a reviewer for four international journals, a program committee member of 10 international conferences, a reviewer for 13 international conferences, and a guest editor of an international journal.

He is an instructor of three courses on software engineering, mobile computing, and mobile application development via web technologies; these courses are held at the University of L'Aquila and Gran Sasso Science Institute, Italy.

He has previously reviewed other books about web technologies for Packt Publishing, such as Backbone.js Cookbook by Vadim Mirgorod and Backbone.js Blueprints by Andrew Burgess.

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Preface

It would seem that everything that needs to be written about JavaScript has been written. Frankly, it is difficult to find a topic related to JavaScript that has not been discussed ad nauseam. However, JavaScript is changing at a rapid pace. ECMAScript 6 has the potential to transform the language and how we code in it. Node.js has already changed the way in which we write servers in JavaScript. Newer ideas such as React and Flux will drive the next iteration of the language. While we spend our time learning the new features, there is no denying that the foundational ideas of JavaScript have to be mastered. These ideas are fundamental and need attention. If you are already an experienced JavaScript developer, you will realize that modern JavaScript is vastly different from the language that most people have known. Modern JavaScript demands a specific stylistic discipline and rigor of thought. Tools are more powerful and slowly becoming an integral part of the development workflow. Though the language seems to be changing, it is built on some very solid and constant ideas. This book emphasizes on these fundamental ideas.

While the book was being written, things kept changing in the JavaScript landscape. Luckily, we were able to include all the important and relevant updates in this book.

Mastering JavaScript provides you with a detailed overview of the language's fundamentals and some of the modern tools and libraries, such as jQuery, Underscore.js, and Jasmine.

We hope that you enjoy this book as much as we enjoyed writing it.

What this book covers

Chapter 1, JavaScript Primer, focuses on the language constructs without spending too much time on the basic details. We will cover the trickier parts of variable scoping and loops and best practices for using types and data structures. We will also cover a lot of ground on the coding style and recommended code organization patterns.

Chapter 2, Functions, Closures and Modules, covers the core of the language intricacies. We will discuss the complexities involved in using functional aspects with different treatment for closures in JavaScript. This is a careful and elaborate discussion that will prepare you to explore more advanced design patterns further on.

Chapter 3, Data Structures and Manipulation, takes a detailed look at regular expressions and arrays. Arrays are a fundamental data type in JavaScript and this chapter will help you work effectively with arrays. Regular expressions can make your code concise—we will take a detailed look at how to use RegEx effectively in your code.

Chapter 4, Object-Oriented JavaScript, discusses object orientation in JavaScript. We will discuss inheritance and the prototype chain and focus on understanding the prototypal inheritance model that JavaScript offers. We will also discuss how different this model is from other object-oriented models to help Java or C++ programmers get familiarized with the change.

Chapter 5, JavaScript Patterns, discusses common design patterns and how to implement them in JavaScript. Once you master the object-oriented model for JavaScript, it is easier to understand design and programming patterns to write modular and easy-to-maintain code.

Chapter 6, Testing and Debugging, covers various modern methods to test and debug issues in JavaScript code. We will also explore continuous testing and test-driven methodologies for JavaScript. We will use Jasmine as the test framework.

Chapter 7, ECMAScript 6, focuses on the newer language features introduced by ECMAScript 6 (ES6). It makes JavaScript more powerful and this chapter will help you understand the newer features and how to use them in your code.

Chapter 8, DOM Manipulation and Events, takes a detailed look at JavaScript as a language of the browser. This chapter discusses DOM manipulation and browser events.

Chapter 9, Server-Side JavaScript, explains how we can use Node.js to write scalable server systems in JavaScript. We will discuss the architecture of Node.js and several useful techniques.

What you need for this book

All the examples in this book can be run on any modern browser. For the last chapter, you will need Node.js. You will need the following prerequisites to run the examples and samples from this book:

A computer with Windows 7 or higher, Linux, or Mac OS X installed.

The latest version of the Google Chrome or Mozilla Firefox browser.

A text editor of your choice. Sublime Text, vi, Atom, or Notepad++ would be ideal. The choice is entirely yours.

Who this book is for

This book is intended to equip you with the details necessary to master JavaScript. This book will be useful for the following audience:

Experienced developers familiar with other object-oriented languages. Information in this book will enable them to transition to JavaScript using their existing experience.

Web developers with some amount of experience with JavaScript. This book will help them learn advanced concepts of JavaScript and refine their programming style.

Beginners who want to understand and eventually master JavaScript. This book has the necessary information for them to get started.

Conventions

In this book, you will find a number of text styles that distinguish between different kinds of information. Here are some examples of these styles and an explanation of their meaning.

Code words in text, database table names, folder names, filenames, file extensions, pathnames, dummy URLs, user input, and Twitter handles are shown as follows: First, the

A block of code is set as follows:

function sayHello(what) {

  return Hello + what;

}

console.log(sayHello(world));

When we wish to draw your attention to a particular part of a code block, the relevant lines or items are set in bold:

Any command-line input or output is written as follows:

EN-VedA:~$ node > 0.1+0.2 0.30000000000000004 > (0.1+0.2)===0.3 false

New terms and important words are shown in bold. Words that you see on the screen, for example, in menus or dialog boxes, appear in the text like this: You can run the page and inspect using Chrome's Developer Tool

Note

Warnings or important notes appear in a box like this.

Tip

Tips and tricks appear like this.

Reader feedback

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To send us general feedback, simply e-mail <feedback@packtpub.com>, and mention the book's title in the subject of your message.

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Now that you are the proud owner of a Packt book, we have a number of things to help you to get the most from your purchase.

Downloading the example code

You can download the example code files from your account at http://www.packtpub.com for all the Packt Publishing books you have purchased. If you purchased this book elsewhere, you can visit http://www.packtpub.com/support and register to have the files e-mailed directly to you.

Downloading the color images of this book

We also provide you with a PDF file that has color images of the screenshots/diagrams used in this book. The color images will help you better understand the changes in the output. You can download this file from https://www.packtpub.com/sites/default/files/downloads/MasteringJavaScript_ColorImages.pdf.

Errata

Although we have taken every care to ensure the accuracy of our content, mistakes do happen. If you find a mistake in one of our books—maybe a mistake in the text or the code—we would be grateful if you could report this to us. By doing so, you can save other readers from frustration and help us improve subsequent versions of this book. If you find any errata, please report them by visiting http://www.packtpub.com/submit-errata, selecting your book, clicking on the Errata Submission Form link, and entering the details of your errata. Once your errata are verified, your submission will be accepted and the errata will be uploaded to our website or added to any list of existing errata under the Errata section of that title.

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Piracy

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We appreciate your help in protecting our authors and our ability to bring you valuable content.

Questions

If you have a problem with any aspect of this book, you can contact us at <questions@packtpub.com>, and we will do our best to address the problem.

Chapter 1. JavaScript Primer

It is always difficult to pen the first few words, especially on a subject like JavaScript. This difficulty arises primarily because so many things have been said about this language. JavaScript has been the Language of the Web—lingua franca, if you will, since the earliest days of the Netscape Navigator. JavaScript went from a tool of the amateur to the weapon of the connoisseur in a shockingly short period of time.

JavaScript is the most popular language on the web and open source ecosystem. http://githut.info/ charts the number of active repositories and overall popularity of the language on GitHub for the last few years. JavaScript's popularity and importance can be attributed to its association with the browser. Google's V8 and Mozilla's SpiderMonkey are extremely optimized JavaScript engines that power Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox browsers, respectively.

Although web browsers are the most widely used platforms for JavaScript, modern databases such as MongoDB and CouchDB use JavaScript as their scripting and query language. JavaScript has become an important platform outside browsers as well. Projects such as Node.js and io.js provide powerful platforms to develop scalable server environments using