Node Roundup
Welcome to the Node Roundup. Send in your apps and libraries using our contact form or @dailyjs.
Faker.js
Faker.js (MIT License) by Marak Squires can be used in Node or a browser. It allows fake data to be generated, for testing or rapid prototyping:
var Faker = require('./Faker');
Faker.Name.findName(); // Maximillia Hodkiewicz
Faker.Internet.email(); // Gabriella.Hermann@bartholome.co.uk
There’s a demo showing the types of data the library can generate.
I like using libraries like this with factories for quickly writing tests (yes, I’m that lazy!)
Nodestream
Nodestream released through LearnBoost under an MIT License is a library used to connect realtime code to templates. It’s built on Jade and Socket.IO and adds a :realtime option to your Jade templates.
The simple example in the documentation demonstrates how to count the number of people viewing your site:
var connections = 0;
var nodestream = io.listen(app).nodestream()
.on('connect', function(){
connections++;
this.emit('connections', connections);
})
.on('disconnect', function(){
connections--;
this.emit('connections', connections);
});
Template:
:realtime(repaint: 'connections', local: 'connections')
.connections
- if (connections > 1)
p #{connections} people are editing right now
- else
p You're all alone, loser
The Socket.IO library (server, client) supports various transports depending on the browser: WebSocket, Flash, forever iframe, XHR long polling, and XHR multipart encoded. These are abstracted to look like a WebSocket-like API.
Soda
Also from LearnBoost (by TJ Holowaychuk and Adam Christian) is Soda, which is a Selenium adapter for Node. This allows you to script browser tests, like this:
browser
.chain
.session()
.open('/')
.type('q', 'Hello World')
.testComplete()
.end(function(err){
if (err) throw err;
console.log('done');
});
Lingo
Meanwhile, I noticed TJ has released Lingo, which provides inflection support and other string transformations. For example:
en.pluralize('fox');
// foxes
en.singularize('foxes');
// fox
lingo.capitalize('hello there');
// Hello there
There’s i18n support and a bunch of other methods.
STDIN Support for Node
While I was looking through Lingo I saw that TJ also wrote a Node patch to add STDIN args. His patch adds – and —stdin flags to the command line arguments. I didn’t realise Node couldn’t do this already, which is surprising because it’s pretty important for shell scripts.
