Node.js Weekly Update — 10 November, 2017

Below you can find RisingStack’s collection of the most important Node.js updates, projects & tutorials from this week:

Node v9.1.0 (Current) released on 07 November.

Notable changes:

CLI:

• NODE_OPTIONS now supports the — stack-trace-limit option.

deps:

• OpenSSL is upgraded to 1.0.2m

http:

• A ‘connect’ event handler leak has been fixed.
• The 103 Early Hints status code is now supported.

Node v8.9.1 (LTS) released on 07 November.

Notable changes:

openssl:

• upgrade openssl sources to 1.0.2m (Shigeki Ohtsu)

Revert “https:

• refactor to use http internals” (Myles Borins)

More Node releases:

• Node v6.12.0 (LTS) released on 07 November.
• Node v4.8.6 (Maintenance) released on 07 November.

Catching without Awaiting

Sometimes you want to set-and-forget an operation without having to wait for it to complete. With async/await, that’s not so obvious. You cannot catch exceptions if you don’t wait for the async method to finish.

In this post, you’ll read how a single error channel impacts the way async operations are performed in the “background”.

Node module deep-dive: querystring

Safia Abdalla has just started a new series on her blog. First off, she walked us through one of the most fundamental modules in the Node standard library: querystring.

I wanna start off by looking at one of the most fundamental modules in the Node standard library: querystring. querystring is a module that allows users to extract values of the query portion of a URL and build a query from an object of key value associations.

HTTP/2 in the Node Core

HTTP/2 is starting to be used more and more (it jumped from 11% in the beginning of this year to 18% total usage on the web).

After the Twitter announcement saying that the flag was about to be removed in 8.x LTS release, Node.js eventually got rid of the flag in version 8.8.0 (Oct, 24). HTTP/2 is still considered to be experimental and despite the fact it is still not 100% finished, you can already start experimenting with it and check the HTTP/2 API documentation.

Create a Twitter Politician Bot with Markov Chains, Node.js, and StdLib

In the world’s current political climate, propaganda is the name of the game and Twitter is the medium of choice. Automation is king, and if you’re not using Twitter bots to sway the masses, you’re doing it wrong.

Learn how to build a twitter bot to appeal to the masses, and create your own “Political Terminator”.

Node Knockout 2018

Node Knockout is a location agnostic 48-hour Node.js hackathon. The competition runs from 00:00 UTC Saturday morning on the 11th of November through to 00:00 UTC Monday morning.

While there is no guaranteed winning formula or idea there are a few things you can do to maximise your chances of finishing. In this article, you can read the advice of Nathan Hoad, on how to make sure to embrace a project successfully.

Node.js core values

In the past, Node.js has relied on an implicit understanding of community members’ expectations. Moving forward, we need to document these implicit expectations so we can work effectively together and empower all members to act in the best interests of Node.js.

To achieve this, at the Node.js Collaborators’ Summit following Node Interactive 2017, the first Node.js Core Values workshop was held.

How I Got Into #Node: Matteo Collina

Matteo is currently a software architect at nearForm and is on the Technical Steering Committee for the Node.js Project.

Within the series of How I Got Into #Node, he was interviewed to reveal how did he get involved in programming, and how did he start contributing to Node.js.

Previously in the Node.js Weekly Update

In the previous Node.js Weekly Update we collected the latest news on Node.js such as lightweight job scheduling for Node.js, how to use Getopts, or how to create a zero dependency HTTP/2 static file server with Node.js. Click if you missed it!

We help you to stay up-to-date with Node.js on a daily basis too. Check out our Node.js news page and its Twitter feed!

Originally published at community.risingstack.com on November 10, 2017.