Glenjamin's node_modules

A curated list of beautiful node_modules that I like to use.

I'm continuously finding, evaluating and using different node_modules. Often I forget the names of the ones I like - especially when it's for something I only do rarely.

I'm also often asked "What module should I use for X?".

This page is my attempt to solve both of these problems, by maintaining a public list of all the modules I like.

Table of Contents generated with DocToc

• Utility Belts
• Debugging
• HTTP
  • Client
  • Server
  • Express Middleware
  • Misc
• React
• Filesystem
• Streams
• Data Wrangling
• CLI
  • Argument Parsing
  • Misc
• External Services
• Testing
• Uncategorised

Utility Belts

• lodash - general functional functions
• async - control flow for async functions

Debugging

• debug - simple, switchable debug logging
• longjohn - stitch together stack traces across event loop ticks
• node-inspector - debug with webkit devtools
• ono - extending errors, including causes

HTTP

Client

• httpism - Newer and fancier http client
• axios - popular promise-based http client
• request - all-in-one HTTP client
• agentkeepalive - better keepalive support for HTTP client
• primus - websocket client/server

Server

• express - popular and simple middleware based server
• primus - generic websocket-type client/server thing
• ws - actual websocket implementation
• http-shutdown - Ensure HTTP server shutdown cleanly despite keepalives

Express Middleware

• body-parser - parse form / json input
• cookie-parser - cookies
• express-secure-cookie - secure cookies by default
• morgan - HTTP request logging
• bunyan-middleware - JSON based request logging
• http-proxy-middleware - Proxy requests through to backend APIs
• linkto - Correctly calculate absolute URL based on incoming request

Misc

• routes - basic standalone URL routing. works on client

Templating

• lodash-express - lodash templates for express
• express-handlebars - reasonably fast mustache-like templating language
• serialize-javascript - Safely serialise JS for use in <script> tags

Databases

• knex - Query builder and migrations

React

• react - React itself
• react-bootstrap - Bootstrap widgets for React
• react-immutable-proptypes

Filesystem

• chokidar - generic file watching

Streams

• split - split a stream of data into lines

Data Wrangling

• immutable - immutable data types
• moment - awesome date/time handling lib
• joi - datatype validation and co-ercion
• tv4 - JSON schema
• xml2js - sometimes XML is unavoidable
• sax - for parsing lots of XML
• escape-string-regexp - escaping regex strings
• validate.js - isomorphic contracts-style validation of data
• dot-prop - safely access deep properties
• daggy - sum types

CLI

Argument Parsing

• yargs - simple argument parsing
• commander - nice API for doing subcommands

Misc

• chalk - ANSI colours

External Services

• mysql
• amqp - been around a long time, API is a bit weird, error handling sometimes annoying
• AMQPea - my own, early days yet

Testing

• mocha - test running framework
• sinon - spies/stubs/mocks
• chai - richer set of assertions, optional expect() API
• dirty-chai - Monkeypatch chai to promote property access assertions into function calls
• supertest - HTTP client for testing servers
• nock - set up fake HTTP responses

Uncategorised

• iconv-lite - Additional character sets
• node-sass - Sass, but for node (native module)
• nodemon - automatically restart/re-run script on file changes
• time-tree - timing with nested splits
• hot-module-replacement - hot module replacement for nodejs server code