I used to use mysql databases and a php backend for my web applications. Now that I am diving deeper into the the javascript world I am looking for a more compatible way to store my data. I like the idea of writing everything in one language, and javascript seems to be capable to make that job.
I started reading about couchDB and the JSON/javaScipt approach seems to fit perfectly to my needs. My question is now, which would be a convenient way to connect to the database from my pages.
I found this post, which explains how to connect to a couchDB directly from a client-side javascript using a library called couch.js. The post is quite a few years old and the library I cannot find anywhere in the web. So I am asking myself If this approach is still up to date.
I was thought that one important reason for using a server backend is to provide a security mechanism to protect the database authentification process. So: Is it generally secure to save an (encrypted) db pwd in a client side script?
So what I am looking for is a quite simple way to access and store json-like data from webpages. Are there any suggestions?
The hosting of the production solution should also be not that difficult and in the end not expansive, since it's rather meant for smaller projects at the moment.
If the post does not fit to the forum, let me know a better place for it..
I have been using the CouchDB jQuery Plugin for development. At first I was hesitant as well to use it due to most documentation being at least a few years old. So far it has worked really well and been very easy to use, especially if you are familiar with JavaScript/jQuery.
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You can get the plugin from Github
CouchDB jQuery Plugin
Or you can save it directly from Futon:
http://localhost:5984/_utils/script/jquery.couch.js (where local host is your IP and 5984 is the port CouchDB is on)
Whatever you do, make sure you enable CORS on your database. There are instructions on the Github Readme page, or this script is super useful and easy to use through npm.
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Documentation can be found here.
This reference has also been very useful for me.
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Good luck!
I just released Slouch, a JavaScript client for CouchDB that can be used in both the browser and in node. I hope this helps!
Related
I'm still new to web development. To learn more about JavaScript(JS) and web development, I am thinking of writing a simple web app which pulls and records time-series data (say, the price of a stock) periodically and draws a live chart showing the historical data. In addition to price data, I would like the app to record/maintain some user-related info such as the ticker of the stock(s) associated to each user.
Ideally, I would like to keep the app light-weight and portable/standalone (meaning, reduce the dependency as much as possible, and the end user hopefully doesn't have to do a lot of configuration/install of dependencies). The issue that I cannot figure out is where to store the historical data. I looked around for database solutions which will allow the app to write data directly from the browser (that is, using JS) to the client's machine. LocalStorage and IndexDB are non-persistent as far as I understand. Some suggested using PouchDB, but upon looking at it closer, it seems like the user need to install CouchDB or some compatible DB (say, SQLite). But that means I cannot share my app with users who aren't technical enough to install and configure CouchDB or SQLite on their machine before using my app.
If anyone could share some insights as to which DB might allow a JS-based app to write persistent data to the client's machine (if such thing even exist), that would be greatly helpful. If there is no such DB solution, please feel free to let me know alternative solutions that would allow the goal of building a simple, portable, JS-based web app. Thank you!
I think the best solution is to use Electron.js. The whole idea of this framework is to create web apps that can reside on client machines. You could package up any DB option you want, or even better, just include an API to your backend through the web app and it will work on your client machine like I think you want it to.
As for DB options, there is a great thread on S.O. that talks about what is possible. It looks like knex.js is your best bet (full disclosure - I haven't used knex).
I'm developer-beginner and I would like to do simple card-sorting site.
hundreds of cards with plain text
no log-ins, it must be as simple for user as possible
few dozens users per day
final state of sorting should be saved under unique link, like site.com/q56we1cfuz4 or site.com/link.php?unique=q56we1cfuz4
User sorts cards as he/she wishes and the result is saved into browser sessions storage (few kb of data in JSON or so). So far, so good.
Question:
As I know only Javascript:
If I need to share the state of the page (data in session storage) with some unique link, is something like Firebase.com good solution for such kind of back-end? Or some simple DB with help od Node.js?
In order to "catch" the link when someone click at unique URL (site.com/link.php?unique=q56we1cfuz4), I still need some server-side script which will ask the DB, like PHP header redirect, right?
Your questions are a little fuzzy, no problem tho. You are just getting into web dev, so there's a lot to wrap your head around and all of the options can be pretty confusing. Some people will complain about opinionated answers, and I'm not going to claim to be objective here, but here are a few tips that I think will get you pointed in a better direction...
Firstly, yes - firebase is a good solution for you to try working with. Aside from the fact that it will give you the db/storage features you need, it's a realtime db, which will give you a lot more than just storage in the long run, and will better equip you for the future web development trends. The firebase API is (mostly) designed to work asynchronously, so from a javascript perspective, it falls right in line with the kind of code you'll end up learning to write.
Re: the other aspect of your question - server-side - check out nodeJS. It's basically a server-side javascript platform that will allow you to use the same skills you're learning to write client-side code for the server. Also check out expressJS, a nodeJS package that provides you the http-server, and allows you to handle dynamic urls, etc. - the bits you were thinking about when you made a reference to PHP.
Hopefully this will help you focus on a few specific tools to familiarize yourself with as you learn web development, rather than having to struggle with everything from new languages, platforms, and way too many libraries, frameworks and techniques to wrap your head around. Good luck!
I am developing a JavaScript SPA using DurandalJs and BreezeJs as main technologies in the client side. I would like to know what libraries I can use to do my application support different languages. I have been doing a little of searching and I have found that JED.js (http://slexaxton.github.com/Jed/) can be a good option for this task.
However I am not very sure, can somebody recommend nay library for this task, or give me some opinion about JED.js.
Also I would like to ask about some library for store information in the browser. Can somebody recommend me one? I have thought in amplify.js, it gives good functionality for doing request to the server and caching this information. But in my application I am using breezejs, so this part is not needed. I only need to store some data like the username and some little information.
Very thanks.
MY SOLUTION:
I have implemented my system using amplify.storage for storing information in the browser and i18next (http://i18next.com/) to make my application avaliable in different human-languages.
I am not much help on the first part of your question. I'm quite interested in the response myself!
I do have some thoughts on local storage. AmplifyJS is really three independent libraries. One of them, amplify.store, is dedicated to the local storage issue and is worth looking at. You might look at lawnchair. Finally, look at the Breeze DocCode sample for examples of storing full and partial entity caches in browser local storage; it's primitive but gives you hints.
I want to create an internally used web app that can be run with just a copy of the web app and the DB (anything from a text file to MS Access/Excel would work fine). Is this possible? I don't want users to have to setup a SQL server to get the app to work. Having the files necessary to run the web app stored on a shared network drive would be ideal, for example. The problem is that JS can't write to a DB. Is there anything that can use to do this?
Like mentioned, I can assume that Access/Excel are installed, if there's anything that might help there.
It's most certainly possible. W3 has put up the specs for a client side database that can be accessed by JavaScript. The modern browsers have good support for it, and since this is for an internal application, you would have some level of control I believe.
Checkout this slide that shows a live demo of Indexed Database. The full spec can be found here. See this link for browsers that currently support IndexedDB. Here's another set of slides showcasing how to use IndexedDB.
However, with this approach, each user's browser has its own DB locally. If you want a centralized DB, then you will need a server.
You can perform database transactions with JavaScript. This is generally discouraged, because it has terrible security implications. However, in a completely local environment, you are probably not causing any additional security risks. (Because, your database is already on the user's machine.) You can see an example of how to use ADO in JavaScript at How to connect to SQL Server database from JavaScript in the browser? .
Possible, yes, Like Making cars that can float in the sea but could not work on dry roads.
Use winforms or something similar. Use the right tool.
If you insists, Firefox plugins can behave in the way you mentioned, and there is a way to bundle a web application with it's server (check the beginner tutorials for RoR to have an example for something similar with webrick).
If I understand your requirements, you might look into ColdFusion.
For example, you can run a DB query pretty simply, check here, in Adobe
I'm wondering if using Node.js (express.js) is the best option to go for a complete website. I've been using Rails + Node.js and am wondering if this is still the best option or if I should move completely to Node.js.
Are there websites built completely with node.js? I imagine it must lack many things Rails offers.
I imagine it must lack many things
Rails offers.
I gave a short list below but I would like to know what you could be missing and I think(almost certain) we can give you some alternatives on node.js.
Modules
node.js is getting pretty complete and I think you can run your entire site using only node.js using for example the following modules. I assume you know about npm. If not I really advice you to google for it and learn that. To search npm you can use http://search.npmjs.org:
web framework:
High performance, high class web
development for Node.js
https://github.com/visionmedia/express
Socket.IO aims to make realtime apps possible in every browser and mobile
device, blurring the differences
between the different transport
mechanisms.
https://github.com/learnboost/socket.io-node
I believe with these two web-frameworks you can create a lot of sites. For example express is a very powerfull web framework and supports a lot of cool things like:
session support.
a lot powerful template engines. I like Jade for example. You could also share these between client and server a lot of the times easily.
excellent routing.
just to name a few.
database:
Redis is an open source, advanced
key-value store. It is often referred
to as a data structure server since
keys can contain strings, hashes,
lists, sets and sorted sets.
https://github.com/mranney/node_redis
MongoDB (from "humongous") is a scalable, high-performance, open source,
document-oriented database.
Mongoose is a MongoDB object modeling tool designed to work in an
asychronous environment.
https://github.com/learnboost/mongoose/
With those two databases I think you should be able to accomplish most of your tasks. The nice thing is that Redis is extremely fast/simple advanced KV-store(dataset in memory/also supports VM) and supports replication while Mongodb is more completely(slower then redis) and also supports sharding.
authentication:
Authentication and authorization (password, facebook, & more) for your node.js Connect and Express apps.
https://github.com/bnoguchi/everyauth
Like I said previously you can get a long way with only these modules.
Express.js is more akin to Sinatra. They're simpler frameworks than rails.
Express's list of sites is fairly small http://expressjs.com/applications.html
So I think it's also good to look at Sinatra's list http://www.sinatrarb.com/wild.html
So to answer your questions in reverse order. Yes it lacks all the features of rails. Yes there are sites written completely in Express. And going to 100% Node.js might be the right decision for your site.
It depends on which features you'd miss and what performance you need.
I'm not sure, but I guess it's perfectly possible. I have built complete sites using plain server side javascript for years without problems. The advantage of node.js seems to be its event driven model and things like socket.io. I just started experimenting with it, I'll probably will try porting an existing site to node.js.
Here you can find a large list of sites built with node.js.
Finally, you may want to read: What it’s like building a real website in Node.js
Yes, as of now node.js lacks many (well, at least a few) things rails offers. Eventually the set of available node.js modules will collectively provide good alternatives to RoR across the board. Or at least different (and often more modern) approaches to the same fundamental problems. There are still some important things missing in the node.js ecosystem including a good ORM for postgresql (rails has ActiveRecord which is great) and a good DB schema management subsystem. Both of these do not exist in the node.js ecosystem as of this moment, but surely they will be there in due time. Rails has these down pat right now.
There are some tricks node.js has that RoR doesn't. Debugging in node.js is more seamless than RoR and express.js is more flexible. Express is the library approach (you tell it what to do) whereas rails is the framework approach (you fill out the boilerplate it creates for you). There are also some fantastic things like stylus and jade, which have equivalents in rails, but when you have a full app written in one language (either javascript or CoffeeScript, which I prefer) and everything is in a modern node.js/TJ Holowaychuck style, you get a level of cohesiveness that is really nice to work within.
The other thing to keep in mind is that while the list of available node.js modules is quite impressive, many of them are not as mature and battle-tested as their rails/django analogs. It's hit or miss, so beware.