HTML5/JavaScript

T13 Chalk Talk: Beyond Hello World - A Practical Introduction to Node.js

03/26/2013

1:15 pm - 2:15 pm

Level: Intermediate

Rick Garibay

Senior Software Development Manager

Amazon.com

From simple, utilitarian services that take those long, cumbersome URIs and shorten them into a shorter link for embedding in Twitter, to novelty services that allow you to personalize and track clicks for measuring impressions, there are no shortage of URL shortening services today on the web.


While the APIs and user experience for these services are very simple, have you ever wondered about the design considerations and capabilities required? For instance, the ability to quickly generate a unique URI, manage state of the URI resource, including capturing clicks, timestamps, etc. while scaling to potentially hundreds if not thousands of concurrent requests requires some thought.
In this talk, we'll look at why Node.js is the perfect framework for building a fast, slick little URL shortening service that is easy to maintain and scales really well on the web. We'll look at a few persistence options as well as benchmarks and who knows, we might just write the next killer URL shortening service!

You will learn:

  • Node.js programming fundamentals on Windows
  • Design considerations for building a URL shortening service
  • Building Node.js services that embrace REST/Hypermedia principles