Node.js Masterclass

The instructor is a board member on the OpenJS Foundation and a part of the Nojest Tech steering committee with over 10 years of experience deploying Node.js systems.

The three key things covered are: test-driven development, avoiding global state, and splitting business logic across multiple modules.

Jest is primarily designed for browser environments and can cause issues with Node.js servers, such as problems with instances of errors and global state. Alternatives like Vtest, Node-tap, and the built-in Node test library are recommended.

The recommended structure involves organizing the application into modules or features based on domains rather than using a traditional Model-View-Controller (MVC) pattern. This helps in managing complexity and scalability.

Fastify uses a Radix prefix tree for routing, which is more efficient and supports metaprogramming on routes, unlike Express which uses an array of regular expressions evaluated in order.

Yes, Fastify can be used in serverless environments, and it works better than Express in AWS Lambda due to its efficient design and lower cold start times.

The Fastify plugin system allows modularization of the application, making it easier to manage, test, and extend functionalities. It also supports graceful shutdowns by managing dependencies and their order of initialization and termination.

Platformatic is a production-ready framework built on top of Fastify. It provides additional features like automatic API generation, environment variable substitution, and a more streamlined setup, while still supporting all Fastify functionalities.

Recommended libraries include 'AT Database', 'NearForm SQL', and 'Kinet'. These libraries allow you to write raw SQL queries while ensuring SQL injection protection.

You can handle authentication by verifying the JWT token at the edge (initial request) and then passing relevant information through HTTP headers to avoid redundant validations in internal microservices.