Playing with Node.js on Windows

This repository gathers Node.js code examples coming from various websites and books.
It also includes several build scripts (batch files) for experimenting with Node.js on a Windows machine.

Ada, Akka, C++, COBOL, Dafny, Dart, Deno, Docker, Erlang, Flix, Golang, GraalVM, Haskell, Kafka, Kotlin, LLVM, Modula-2, Rust, Scala 3, Spark, Spring, TruffleSqueak, WiX Toolset and Zig are other topics we are continuously monitoring.

Project dependencies

This project depends on the following external software for the Microsoft Windows platform:

Optionally one may also install the following software:

🔎 Git for Windows provides a BASH emulation used to run git from the command line (as well as over 250 Unix commands like awk, diff, file, grep, more, mv, rmdir, sed and wc).

For instance our development environment looks as follows (November 2024) ²:

C:\opt\ConEmu\                   ( 26 MB)
C:\opt\Git\                      (391 MB)
C:\opt\mongodb\                  (2.0 GB)
C:\opt\mongosh\                  (137 MB)
C:\opt\node-v18.20.4-win-x64\    ( 78 MB)
C:\opt\node-v20.18.0-win-x64\    ( 77 MB)
C:\opt\node-v22.11.0-win-x64\    ( 89 MB
C:\opt\VSCode\                   (381 MB)

☛ Installation policy
When possible we install software from a Zip archive rather than via a Windows installer. In our case we defined C:\opt\ as the installation directory for optional software tools (in reference to the /opt/ directory on Unix).

Directory structure

This project is organized as follows:

bin\
docs\
samples\{README.md, auth-passport, ..}
samples_Bojinov\{README.md, contacts-1-JSON, ..}
samples_Cook\{README.md, 03_basic_auth, ..}
samples_Duuna\{README.md, chp-3-networking, ..}
samples_Lambert\{README.md, 06-files, ..}
samples_Pillora\{README.md, 4-02-project, ..}
README.md
RESOURCES.md
setenv.bat

where

directory bin\ contains utility batch scripts.
directory docs\ contains Node.js related papers/articles.
directory samples\ contains Node.js code examples grabbed from various websites.
directory samples_Bojinov\ contains Node.js code examples from Bojinov's book.
directory samples_Cook\ contains Node.js code examples from Cook's book.
directory samples_Duuna\ contains Node.js code examples from Düüna's book.
directory samples_Lambert\ contains Node.js code examples from Lambert's book.
directory samples_Pillora\ contains Node.js code examples from Pillora's book.
file README.md is the Markdown document for this page.
file RESOURCES.md gathers Node.js related informations.
file setenv.bat is the batch script for setting up our environment.

We also define a virtual drive – e.g. drive N: – in our working environment in order to reduce/hide the real path of our project directory (see article "Windows command prompt limitation" from Microsoft Support).

🔎 We use the Windows external command subst to create virtual drives; for instance:
> subst N: %USERPROFILE%\workspace\nodejs-examples

In the next section we give a brief description of the batch files present in this project.

Batch commands ▴

We distinguish different sets of batch commands:

setenv.bat - This batch command makes the external tools such as node.exe, npm.cmd directly available from the command prompt.

 > setenv help
 Usage: setenv { <option> | <subcommand> }
  
   Options:
     -debug      print commands executed by this script
     -verbose    print progress messages
  
   Subcommands:
     help        print this help message
  
 > where node npm
 C:\opt\node-v18.20.4-win-x64\node.exe
 C:\opt\node-v18.20.4-win-x64\npm
 C:\opt\node-v18.20.4-win-x64\npm.cmd

bin\check-outdated.bat prints out outdated package dependencies for all project directories (i.e. directories containing file package.json).

> bin\check-outdated help
Usage: check-outdated { <option> | <subcommand> }
 
  Options:
    -debug      print commands executed by this script
    -install    install latest package (if outdated)
    -timer      print total execution time
    -verbose    print progress messages
 
  Subcommands:
    help        print this help message

samples\setenv.bat - This batch command works the same way as in project root directory (point 1) with possibly additional tools (e.g. mongod.exe or siege.exe).

Usage examples ▴

`setenv.bat` ³

We execute command setenv.bat once to setup your development environment:

> setenv
Tool versions:
   node v18.20.4, npm 10.8.2, node v20.17.0, npm 10.8.2,
   mongod v7.0.12, mongosh 2.3.3, code 1.95.2,
   git 2.47.0, diff 3.10, bash 5.2.37(1)
 
> where mongosh npm
C:\opt\mongosh\bin\mongosh.exe
C:\opt\node-v18.20.4-win-x64\npm
C:\opt\node-v18.20.4-win-x64\npm.cmd

Command setenv.bat -verbose also displays the tool paths:

> setenv -verbose
Tool versions:
   node v18.20.4, npm 10.8.2, node v20.17.0, npm 10.8.2,
   mongod v7.0.12, mongosh 2.3.3, code 1.95.2,
   git 2.47.0, diff 3.10, bash 5.2.37(1)
Tool paths:
   C:\opt\node-v18.20.4-win-x64\node.exe
   C:\opt\node-v18.20.4-win-x64\npm.cmd
   C:\opt\node-v20.17.0-win-x64\node.exe
   C:\opt\node-v20.17.0-win-x64\npm.cmd
   C:\opt\mongodb\bin\mongod.exe
   C:\opt\mongosh\bin\mongosh.exe
   C:\opt\Git\bin\git.exe
   C:\opt\Git\mingw64\bin\git.exe
   C:\opt\Git\usr\bin\diff.exe
Environment variables:
   "GIT_HOME="C:\opt\Git"
   "MONGODB_HOME=C:\opt\mongodb"
   "MONGOSH_HOME=C:\opt\mongosh"
   "NODE_HOME=C:\opt\node-v20.17.0-win-x64"
   "NODE18_HOME=C:\opt\node-v18.20.4-win-x64"
   "NODE20_HOME=C:\opt\node-v20.17.0-win-x64"
   "NODE22_HOME=C:\opt\node-v20.17.0-win-x64"
   "VSCODE_HOME=C:\opt\VSCode"
Path associations:
   Q:\: => %USERPROFILE%\workspace-perso\nodejs-examples

`bin\check-outdated.bat`

Command bin\check-outdated.bat visits all project directories and prints out outdated package dependencies. For instance we see in the following output that package eslint-plugin-node is outdated in several projects:

> bin\check-outdated
directory samples\auth-passport\
directory samples\locales-1\
directory samples\locales-2\
directory samples\mongoose-default-connection\
directory samples\webaudio-sample\
   outdated package eslint-plugin-node: current=9.2.0, latest=10.0.0
directory samples_Bojinov\contacts-1-JSON\
directory samples_Bojinov\contacts-2-LevelDB\
directory samples_Bojinov\contacts-3-LevelDB2\
directory samples_Bojinov\contacts-4-Mongoose\
directory samples_Bojinov\contacts-5-MongoDB\
   outdated package eslint-plugin-node: current=9.2.0, latest=10.0.0
directory samples_Bojinov\contacts-6-Image\
[...]

Command bin\check-outdated.bat -install also updates the outdated package dependencies (and file package.json).

`samples\setenv.bat`

Command samples\setenv.bat -verbose inside project directory samples\ also adds the mongod.exe tool to the path:

> cd
N:\samples
 
> setenv -verbose
Tool versions:
   node v18.20.4, npm 10.8.2, node v20.17.0, npm 10.8.2,
   mongod v7.0.12, mongosh 2.3.3, code 1.95.2,
   git 2.47.0, diff 3.10, bash 5.2.37(1)
Tool paths:
   C:\opt\node-v18.20.4-win-x64\node.exe
   C:\opt\node-v18.20.4-win-x64\npm.cmd
   C:\opt\node-v20.17.0-win-x64\node.exe
   C:\opt\node-v20.17.0-win-x64\npm.cmd
   C:\opt\mongodb\bin\mongod.exe
   C:\opt\mongosh\bin\mongosh.exe
   C:\opt\Git\bin\git.exe
   C:\opt\Git\mingw64\bin\git.exe
   C:\opt\Git\usr\bin\diff.exe

`npm.cmd`

Command npm.cmd works as expected inside every project directory; for instance in project samples\webaudio-sample\.

> cd
N:\samples\webaudio-sample

> npm install -audit
audited 406 packages in 2.527s
found 0 vulnerabilities

> npm start

> [email protected] start N:\samples\webaudio-sample
> node ./npm_scripts/start_browser.js && node .

Module search path: N:\samples_Bojinov\\node_modules
Express server listening on port 8180
Returning Paradise.m4a for request /music
[...]

🔎 From time to time we also run one of the following command to search for possible syntax or logic errors in our JavaScript code:
> npm run lint
 
> [email protected] lint N:\samples\webaudio-sample
> eslint app

Footnotes ▴

[1] Node.js LTS (Long Term Support) ↩

We make the choice to work with the latest LTS version of Node.js. We started this project with version 8 LTS and successively upgraded it to version 10, 12, 14, 16 and 18 LTS.

LTS version	Initial Release	End-of-life
24.x	April 2025	April 2028
22.x	April 2024	April 2027
20.x	April 2023	April 2026
18.x	April 2022	April 2025
16.x	October 2021	April 2024
14.x	October 2020	April 2023
12.x	October 2019	April 2022
10.x	October 2018	April 2021
8.x	October 2017	December 2019

Node.js version 14 LTS has been announced in April 2020.

IBM Developer: Node.js 14 release,
by Michael Dawson, April 21, 2020.
Medium: Node.js version 14 available now, Node.js team, April 21, 2020.

[2] Downloads ↩

In our case we downloaded the following installation files (see section 1):

mongodb-windows-x86_64-7.0.12.zip  (336 MB)
mongosh-2.3.3-win32-x64.zip        ( 33 MB)
node-v18.20.4-win-x64.zip          ( 27 MB)
node-v20.17.0-win-x64.zip          ( 28 MB)
node-v22.11.0-win-x64.zip          ( 32 MB)
PortableGit-2.47.0-64-bit.7z.exe   ( 42 MB)
VSCode-win32-x64-1.95.2.zip        (131 MB)

[3] setenv.bat usage ↩

Batch file setenv.bat has specific environment variables set that enable us to use command-line developer tools more easily.

It is similar to the setup scripts described on the page "Visual Studio Developer Command Prompt and Developer PowerShell" of the Visual Studio online documentation.

For instance we can quickly check that the two scripts Launch-VsDevShell.ps1 and VsDevCmd.bat are indeed available in our Visual Studio 2019 installation :

> where /r "C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio" *vsdev*
C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio\2019\Community\Common7\Tools\Launch-VsDevShell.ps1
C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio\2019\Community\Common7\Tools\VsDevCmd.bat
C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio\2019\Community\Common7\Tools\vsdevcmd\core\vsdevcmd_end.bat
C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio\2019\Community\Common7\Tools\vsdevcmd\core\vsdevcmd_start.bat

Concretely, in our GitHub projects which depend on Visual Studio (e.g. michelou/cpp-examples), setenv.bat does invoke VsDevCmd.bat (resp. vcvarall.bat for older Visual Studio versions) to setup the Visual Studio tools on the command prompt.

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Playing with Node.js on Windows

Project dependencies

Directory structure

Batch commands ▴

Usage examples ▴

`setenv.bat` ³

`bin\check-outdated.bat`

`samples\setenv.bat`

`npm.cmd`

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Name		Name	Last commit message	Last commit date
Latest commit History 227 Commits
bin		bin
docs		docs
samples		samples
samples_Bojinov		samples_Bojinov
samples_Cook		samples_Cook
samples_Duuna		samples_Duuna
samples_Lambert		samples_Lambert
samples_Pillora		samples_Pillora
samples_Visual_Studio/App1/NodejsWebApp1		samples_Visual_Studio/App1/NodejsWebApp1
.gitattributes		.gitattributes
.gitignore		.gitignore
README.md		README.md
RESOURCES.md		RESOURCES.md
setenv.bat		setenv.bat
setenv.sh		setenv.sh

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