Create A Real Time Chat Application With The CEAN Stack and Socket.io

I’ve always wondered what it took to develop a real-time chat application. Being able to broadcast messages instantly to other people using the same application is a pretty cool concept. Since I’ve been playing around a lot with the Couchbase, Express, Angular, and Node.js (CEAN) stack, I figured it would be pretty awesome to try to make a chat application using those technologies. To make life easy, I found a pretty sweet library called Socket.io, which will do a lot of the tough broadcasting work.

We’re going to see how to create a very simple chat application, that with a little imagination, can become something incredible.

Waiting For A Loop Of Async Functions To Finish In Node.js

At the moment Node.js is my web development language of choice, but occasionally I come across something that really grinds my gears. I sometimes find that I’ve fallen into an async hell that screws up a lot of things. For example, maybe I’ve designed an API endpoint that makes a few requests to external services. Before returning data to the client (user), manipulations must be done on the external service data requested. How do we do all this?

Let’s take a look how we would cover these scenarios.

Using PassportJS In Your Node.js And Couchbase Web App

I was at an event not too long ago where someone recommended I take a look at PassportJS for my Node.js applications. In case you’re unfamiliar with PassportJS, it is an authentication middleware that makes it easy to work with logins, whether they are with basic login, or with social media accounts such as Facebook and Twitter.

Being that I’m into different authentication techniques, as seen in my other oauth articles, I figured it wouldn’t be a bad idea to do a walkthrough on PassportJS with Express Framework for Node.js.

Create A Full Stack App Using Node.js & Couchbase Server

Previously I wrote about how to create an AngularJS application with PouchDB and Couchbase. The way I demonstrated is of course one way to accomplish the job of using Couchbase in a web application. This time around we’re going to take a look at creating a full stack application using the Couchbase, Express.js, AngularJS, and Node.js (CEAN) stack.

You might be familiar with the MongoDB, Express.js, AngularJS, and Node.js (MEAN) stack, but I’m going to show you that this is just as possible with Couchbase and even easier to do.

We’re going to see how to install and configure all four of the CEAN stack services as well as make a very simple application out of them.

Upcoming Presentation: ConnectJS 2015

In case you’re in the area and are interested, I will be in Atlanta, Georgia on October 16 and October 17 speaking at ConnectJS. This is a conference focusing on JavaScript development and mobile application development.

I will be giving two presentations titled Quick and Easy Development with Node.js and Couchbase Server and Developing For Offline Mobile Experiences.

Create A Simple RESTful API With Node.js

I’ve written a few tutorials regarding Node.js and the Express.js framework, but I never took a step back and explained how to make a super simple RESTful API for processing HTTP requests from a front-facing interface.

With this API created, you can use it with just about any application that can submit HTTP requests. It is a great way to test a mobile application or one that uses JavaScript frameworks like jQuery, ReactJS, or AngularJS.

Upcoming Presentation: Silicon Valley Code Camp 2015

In case you’re interested in seeing me present on Node.js or Ionic Framework and Couchbase, I’ll be giving two talks at the free to attend Silicon Valley Code Camp in San Jose, California. It is the weekend of October 3rd to October 4th.

The title of my talks are Quick and Easy Development with Node.js and Couchbase Server and Cross Platform Storage & Sync with Couchbase and Ionic Framework. The abstracts for both these talks can be seen below.