Node Roundup
node
server
frameworks
podcasts
binding
Welcome to the Node Roundup. Send in your apps and libraries using our contact form or @dailyjs.
Fab
Fab by Jed Schmidt is a toolkit for building asynchronous web applications on top of Node. It looks like it was under heavy development, but the author says API changes have started to calm down. There’s a copiously commented demo script that explains the basics. Schmidt uses with in this example to feign a more DSL-like API, which I suppose you don’t have to do if you don’t like with.
Fab is interesting because it doesn’t claim to be a replacement for Sinatra, Rails, or Django. Instead it presents an API with concise syntax combining routing, templates, and application logic. The way Schmidt has written the demo looks Lisp-like on first blush. His demo looks cosmetically different to most Node frameworks that I’ve seen, but I suppose you could draw comparisons with Sinatra/Express/Compojure/etc.
Fab’s name comes from 0xFAB which is 4011 in decimals — the port number you might like to use for Fab apps.
Nodaphone
I mentioned the jQuery Phono library yesterday, and coincidentally I also discovered Nodaphone which uses Twilio to allow phones to interact with a web app. The code is at DTrejo / nodaphone on GitHub.
The Noded
I’ve been talking to Micheil Smith on our IRC channel (irc.freenode.net, #dailyjs) and he told me about a podcast he’s started with Mikeal Rogers called The Noded. They’re still working on finishing off the web site and podcast, but they both commit to Node and are active in the community so it sounds like it’s going to be worth listening to (and I rarely say that about programming podcasts).
Follow @thenoded to get notified when the podcast is available.
Node FFI
node-ffi by Rick Branson has been getting a lot of attention lately. It’s a library for calling dynamic libraries using pure JavaScript, so it allows binding to native libraries without writing C++ code.
Branson says the library should be used with caution right now, but it’s definitely encouraging to see this is being seriously worked on.
