by Greg Lim, published by Greg Lim July 2019.

Started reading/studying this book on December 14, 2020.

This repo contains the exercises and examples of the book.

December 14, 2020

December 16, 2020

Similar to chapter 1, but now we created a web server with Express.

Had to add extra code to make the example work, because of an error:

The resource from "http://localhost:3000/css/index.css" was blocked due to MIME type mismatch (X-Content-Type-Options: nosniff)
The resource from "http://localhost:3000/js/index.js" was blocked due to MIME type mismatch (X-Content-Type-Options: nosniff)

app.use(express.static(__dirname + "/public", {
    index: false, 
    immutable: true, 
    cacheControl: true,
    maxAge: "30d"
}));

December 17, 2020

After installing theme and node packages, node found 4 low severity vulnerabilities. Used npm audit fix, which took care of 3 of them. For the 4th I found conflicting solutions via Google, but as it is a low severity vulnerability I decided to leave it as it is.

I have no idea, why the problem wasn't resolved by using npm audit fix as I am still new to server-side JS. Is it because I use more recent versions than the ones used in the book?

• node: v12.18.3 vs v10.15.3
• npm: v6.14.9 vs v6.4.1
• Clean Blog theme: updated a month ago, while the book was published a year and a half ago

Still, I got everything working.

December 19, 2020

Copied contents of directory ch03 into directory ch04. When I tried to run the app I got an error, which forced me to delete and reinstall nodemon.

Four chapters in and I feel I already have a better understanding of Node.js than after 3 Zenva courses.

December 21, 2020

Aha! The errors I get when copying the contents of the directory of a previous chapter, can be avoided when I exclude the node_modules directory.

After everything was copied in ch05, execute the following commands at the command line

npm init
npm install
npm audit fix

Found some typos in the code and got a warning when executing the test.js file.

DeprecationWarning: current Server Discovery and Monitoring engine is deprecated, and will be removed in a future version. To use the new Server Discover and Monitoring engine, pass option { useUnifiedTopology: true } to the MongoClient constructor

December 22, 2020

In this chapter you learn how to post new articles, display a list with all the articles and display a single article. Two thirds into the chapter, the author suggests you try out adding a functioning search bar to the site. Wait! What?

December 23, 2020

I have the impression that there is less explaining of the code.

December 23, 2020

Had to modify the code from the book

const validateMiddleWare = (req,res,next)=>{    
    if(req.files == null || req.body.title == null || req.body.title == null){        
        return res.redirect('/posts/new')
    }    
    next()
}

to the following in order to get it to work:

const validateMiddleWare = (req, res, next) => {
    if (req.files == null || req.body.title.trim() == '' || req.body.body.trim() == '') {
        return res.redirect('/posts/new');
    }
    next()
};

Because even when the form fields title and body are empty, they are not null.

December 24, 2020

The faulty code from the previous chapter appeared again.

December 27, 2020

Received the following warning

(node:4789) DeprecationWarning: collection.ensureIndex is deprecated. Use createIndexes instead.

It is just a warning, but found a solution on StackOverflow: add useCreateIndex: true and useNewUrlParser: true to the mongoose.connect function in index.js.

mongoose.connect('mongodb://localhost/my_database', { 
    useCreateIndex: true,
    useNewUrlParser: true,
    useUnifiedTopology: true, 
    useNewUrlParser: true 
});

December 27, 2020

Author referred to a non-existing file on page 107. The file homePage.js doesn't exist, the code that needs modifying is in the file controllers/home.js.

Encountered another deprectation warning:

express-session deprecated undefined resave option; provide resave option index.js:64:9
express-session deprecated undefined saveUninitialized option; provide saveUninitialized option index.js:64:9

So I added the keys resave and saveUninitialized to the the function in the index.js file:

app.use(expressSession({
    resave: true,
    saveUninitialized: true,
    secret: 'keyboard cat'
}));

Sometimes small pieces of code samples need to be added to a file, without telling where exactly. At the end of the file, after certain statementents and before others? Already wasted some time figuring that out!

December 28, 2020

The backticks in the error messages weren't properly escaped, so I had to be creative.

<li class="list-group-item list-group-item-danger"><%- errors[i].replace(/`/g, '&apos;') %></li>

December 29, 2020

December 29, 2020

Not too pleased with this chapter. The Summernote editor had a higher version number than the one in the book, and when I used that version with the code from the book I ended up with an infinite loop of forms inside forms. Copying the head element from the book (referring to an older version of Summernote) gave me a mostly working editor, but the dropdowns didn't work and now the page loads two different versions of jQuery, Popper.js and Bootstrap.js. Removing one of those versions and it stops working. I decided to leave it at that.

I don't believe the author thouroughly tested this code. Yes, he did mention that we now need to include the unescaped text <%- %> (vs previously the escaped text <%= %>) from the blog post into the template. However, it doesn't stop there. He uses the text also to display the description or summary in the list of articles on the homepage. My solution was to cut it short and unescape it. His solution was to simply remove it. My solution:

<%- blogposts[i].body.substring(0, 100) %>  ...

December 30, 2020

Error on page 147, correct the contents of the Procfile:

WRONG:

web: node app.js

CORRECT

web: node index.js