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My First Node.js App

Prerequisites

  • Node.js, and NPM
  • Git

Installation

Make a copy of this template repository. Download or "clone" your copy of the repo onto your local computer, for example, onto the Desktop.

Before running any of the commands below, navigate into this directory from the command-line:

cd ~/Desktop/my-first-nodejs-app

Install package dependencies:

npm install

NOTE: this looks at the package dependencies defined in the "package.json" file and installs them locally into the "node_modules" directory.

Setup

Obtain a premium AlphaVantage API Key from the professor (i.e. ALPHAVANTAGE_API_KEY).

Create a new file called ".env" in the root directory of your local repo, and place inside the following contents, specifying your own values as applicable:

# this is the ".env" file...

USER_NAME="Jon Snow"

ALPHAVANTAGE_API_KEY="______"

Usage

Examine the contents of each of the scripts below as you run them in order.

Basic Scripts

The "index" script shows we can run some basic JavaScript:

node index.js

The "calculate" script demonstrates how to import and use installed third-party packages (like d3):

node app/calculate.js

The "my script" file demonstrates how to import and use functionality from another local JavaScript file (in this case, the "my-mod.js" file in the "utils" directory):

node app/my-script.js

The "message" script demonstrates how to use the dotenv package to read environment variables from the ".env" file:

node app/message.js

Stocks & Cryptos

These scripts demonstrate asynchronous requests using the node-fetch package.

Run the "stocks" script to fetch some stock market data, optionally specifying a stock symbol environment variable at runtime:

node app/stocks.js
# alternatively...
STOCK_SYMBOL="MSFT" node app/stocks.js
STOCK_SYMBOL="TSLA" node app/stocks.js
# ... etc.

Run the "cryptos" script to get some cryptocurrency ratings:

node app/cryptos.js

Database Setup Guide

Students seeking some further exploration can follow the Database Setup Guide to fetch data from a Google Firestore database.