as a total JavaScript beginner, how do I actually develop for it?
I mean, I've seen https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/documentation/articles/documentdb-programming/ but there was no mentioning of a development environment.
Is there something like a visual studio project template for server-side javascript?
I use node.js so your mileage may vary if you are developing from .NET, but here's what I do:
First of all, I created an npm package documentdb-utils. It is a wrapper for the DocumentDB node.js package that makes it easier to do a bunch of things.
Then, I created npm package documentdb-mock to write tests for my stored procedures. The source code for documentdb-mock includes 4 example stored procedures along with a test suite for each using nodeunit. You can start with these as they exercise most of the server-side API.
After I have them passing my local unit tests, I write integration tests that exercise my system end-to-end including creating any necessary data for each test run. The only problems that I've found here with sprocs that I didn't see in my mocked testing had to do with reaching certain limits... although, documentdb-mock has been upgraded to simulate many of these now also.
I haven't open sourced this yet, but I have also written a parser/rewriter that will embed any require(d) packages into my sprocs before sending them to DocumentDB. This allows me to write and test in a nicely factored way on node.js even using downloaded packages from within my sprocs, but when they get pushed to DocumentDB any dependencies are automatically embedded inside of the function. I'll open source that at some point (probably adding it to documentdb-utils) but I can share it with you now if you desire.
Here are a few tools that I found helpful for development (especially server-side [by which we mean database-side] scripting):
DocumentDB Studio - https://github.com/mingaliu/DocumentDBStudio/releases
Sample Code - https://github.com/Azure/azure-documentdb-js-server/tree/master/samples/stored-procedures
Here is another nice open source tool for exploring data in documentdb:
documentdb.a7pl.us
Related
I am evaluating which framework to create a desktop app. A requirement I have is that the source code "protection" (no one should see the original source code).
For Neautrlinojs I have found this:
https://github.com/neutralinojs/neutralinojs/issues/153#issuecomment-817842757
Now we are using the .asar format (But it is .neu in our scenario). Therefore, I will close this issue. Thanks for reporting the issue/idea.
But, as I know, the sourcecode (js) of an asar file che be obtained.
Is there a way to make impossible to get the "original" code from the build of Neautrlinojs or Electron?
I know that in a build made with nw.js, source code is very difficult to be obtained
For this kind of requirement, which framework is the most suitable?
Thank you!
If you need source code protection you need to use a tool that builds your source code to a native binary. NW.js allows for this by capturing your JS code running in memory in the V8 engine (a "V8 Snapshot"). Which means you need to run it's nwjc tool on each platform to capture it running in memory.
Other tools exist for creating Cross-Platform Desktop Apps (XPDAs):
https://xpda.net
However if you want to use JavaScript as your source code, your only real option is NW.js, or to store it on a remote server and access it via the internet.
https://nwjs.io - Official website
https://nwutils.io - Community website
I have already experimented testing NodeJS libraries using Jasmine or Mocha, but I don't know how to test front-end projects. I have found tutorials online, but everything includes a task manager in the workflow and I would like to know how to do this without one.
I found the following question close to what I am asking:
Using Travis-CI for client-side JavaScript libraries?
In my case, I am using Jasmine and have already set up the Jasmine SpecRunner.html, Jasmine library and spec/mylibSpec.js. The tests pass when I run the SpecRunner.html on my browser.
Now, how do I integrate this with Travis, without Grunt/Gulp/Brunch/etc?
I have heard the words "PhantomJS" and "Selenium" and I think this has to do with what I am trying to accomplish. Is there a "hello, world"-like project with tests and Travis integration one can learn from?
The Travis documentation lists three basic ways to accomplish this:
the PhantomJS headless browser
running Firefox with a virtual display or
using the Saucelabs browser VM service
Testing with PhantomJS is the fastest, since it does not simulate a display (it still allows you to create screenshots, though). PhantomJS comes with a run-jasmine example.
The phantom test script can then be executed directly, simply by running
script: phantomjs run-jasmine.js
in your .travis.yml, without the additional overhead of a build system such as Grunt.
If testing your project requires a real browser GUI, that leaves you with options 2 or 3.
Saucelabs browser VMs have the advantage of real cross-browser testing; if your project is open source, they offer a free plan. They also provide an in-depth tutorial for your specific use case: Travis + Jasmine + Saucelabs, which however does require Grunt in order to run.
I checked some websites source code and JavaScript games. The problem is that everything is readable and understandable except for JavaScript code that is isolated on a file with the extension .js. It looks like this:
{Vargas=void0,h=!0,Ge=null,l=!1,AA=component,BA=Infinity,ca=set Timeout,DA=is Nan,m=Math,ea=deconstructionism;function He(a,b){return a.on-load=b}function IE(a,b){return a.on error=b}function ha(a,b) {return a.name=b}
As you can see, it's hard to read this code because of the stupid indentation. I tried to use Microsoft visual web developer and free JavaScript editors to organize the code, but it was all useless!
How can I make it more readable?
The best place to start is to look at other open source java script libraries/modules/plugins. You must have the original code though, because what you see in the browser is already "compiled" for the web to be small and fast.
For the client you have plenty frameworks. Look for example at the list jsfiddle uses (top-left). You can also use this tool to play with javascript without having to install anything. Search on the web for those projects (that jsfiddle uses as libraries) and look into the code.
There is also a server-side javascript library that allows you to write javascript code also for the server (also web apps, the server side of them). This is called Node.js Ceck this page to find out more. In Node.js you have almost an infinite number of open source and small modules: see the node module registry wehre you find the links also to the individual project.
In any case, you certainly need a Github account to play with other's code because most of these projects are stored on Github.
So we're writing a full-text search framework MongoDb. MongoDB is pretty much javascript-native, so we wrote the javascript library first, and it works.
Now I'm trying to write a python framework for it, which will be partially in python, but partially use those same stored javascript functions - the javascript functions are an intrinsic part of the library. On the other hand, the javascript framework does not depend on python. since they are pretty intertwined it seems like it's worthwhile keeping them in the same repository.
I'm trying to work out a way of structuring the whole project to give the javascript and python frameworks equal status (maybe a ruby driver or whatever in the future?), but still allow the python library to install nicely.
Currently it looks like this: (simplified a little)
javascript/jstest/test1.js
javascript/mongo-fulltext/search.js
javascript/mongo-fulltext/util.js
python/docs/indext.rst
python/tests/search_test.py
python/tests/__init__.py
python/mongofulltextsearch/__init__.py
python/mongofulltextsearch/mongo_search.py
python/mongofulltextsearch/util.py
python/setup.py
I've skipped out a few files for simplicity, but you get the general idea; it' a pretty much standard python project... except that it depends critcally ona whole bunch of javascript which is stored in a sibling directory tree.
What's the preferred setup for dealing with this kind of thing when it comes to setuptools? I can work out how to use package_data etc to install data files that live inside my python project as per the setuptools docs.
The problem is if i want to use setuptools to install stuff, including the javascript files from outside the python code tree, and then also access them in a consistent way when I'm developing the python code and when it is easy_installed to someone's site.
Is that supported behaviour for setuptools? Should i be using paver or distutils2 or Distribute or something? (basic distutils is not an option; the whole reason I'm doing this is to enable requirements tracking) How should i be reading the contents of those files into python scripts?
The short answer is that none of the Python distribution tools is going to do what you want, the exact way you want it. Even if you use distutils' data_files feature, you're still going to have to have your javascript files copied into your Python project directory (i.e., somewhere under the same directory as your setup.py.)
Given that, you might as well just copy the .js files to your package (i.e. alongside mongofulltextsearch/init.py) as part of your build process, and use package_data or include_package_data=True.
(Or alternatively, you could possibly use symlinks, externals, or some such, if your revision control system supports those. I believe that when building source distributions, the Python distribution tools convert symlinks to real files. At least, you could give that a try.)
Given a need to write command line utilities to do common tasks like uploading files to a remote FTP site, downloading data from a remote MySQL database etc.
Is it practical to use JavaScript for this sort of thing? I know there are JavaScript interpreters that can be run from the command line, but are there libraries for things like FTP and database access the way there are for e.g. Java? If so, what's the best place to look for them? (Google searches with JavaScript in the keywords always seem to return many pages of browser specific things.)
And is there a way to package a JavaScript program up as a standalone executable on Windows?
Update: I've decided Python is a better tool for this kind of job, but the answers to the original question are still good ones.
Standalone executable?
By the way you ask the question, I'm not sure if you are aware, but the Windows Script Host - included in Windows - allows you to run .js files from the command-line. Your javascript will not be an executable, it will remain a script, a text file. The script runs within cscript.exe, which is provided by WSH. There's no compilation required. Maybe you knew all that.
I use Javascript this way for various utilities on Windows.
I think your instinct is right on the availability of libraries. You are sort of on your own to find all those things. Although, once you find them, it's not hard to package Javascript libraries as COM components and allow re-use from anywhere. See here for an example of packaging the Google Diff/Patch/Match Javascript library in COM.
Addendum: Once a bit of code is available within COM, it can be consumed by any Javascript running on the machine. Some examples of COM objects available to Javascript scripts running in WSH:
MSXML2.XMLHTTP object - used in AJAX, but can be used for any HTTP communication. There also an object for the XSLT engine so you can do transforms from script.
Excel.Application - allows you to open up Excel spreadsheets and automate them from Javascript.
Communicator.UIAutomation - automate MS Communicator (send IM's via script)
COM objects for Google Earth.
SlowAES - an all-Javascript implementation of AES encryption.
You can use Rhino to compile Javascript into Java byte code, and get access to all Java libraries.
Or you could use JScript.net, and get access to the .net libraries. .net includes a jsc.exe that produces exe-files.
Both of these requires the respective framework to be installed to be able to run.
Node.js is by far the best environment for running non-browser JS. I've used Rhino and SpiderMonkey, and there's a pretty huge difference in everything from the basics like how errors are handled to the size of the community using the tool. Node is pitched for "server-side" JS - building server apps in JS. It's great for this. But it works equally well for building command line tools.
The NPM package manager (bundled with Node) provides a nice global directory for finding and installing packages. It works much better than other language equivalents like PECL / Pear / CPAN / etc. Several high quality tools like JSHint, The Jade templating language, and the CoffeeScript compiler are all already available through NPM/Node:
npm install -g jshint, coffee-script, jade
jshint my_code.js
jade < my.jade > my.html
For args parsing, there are packages like commander.js. I currently use a heavily extended version of Commander in my underscore-cli command-line tool.
For messing with JSON or for doing command-line JS work (similar to "perl -pe"), check out underscore-cli - It's a really powerful tool for processing JSON data, processing underscore templates, and running JS expressions from the command-line. I use it for 1001 different things that would otherwise be really annoying to accomplish.
Rhino is bundled with JDK 1.6, jrunscript.exe in the bin directory will allow you to run any Javascript you want. Since it runs under Java you get access to any Java libraries that you may have.
We use it from the command line extensively. It's very good at that.
One way is to write these utilities as AIR applications - They can be written in JavaScript and need not have a UI. They have access to the command line, and there are existing ActionScript 3 libraries that can handle FTP etc. These ActionScript APIs can be called from JS, in AIR applications. AIR applications also have access to a sqlite database.
jslibs is a good standalone JavaScript runtime that support many 3rd party open source libraries like zlib, SQLite, NSPR, libiconv, libTomCrypt, OpenGL, ...