Functional Design Patterns for Express.js: A step-by-step guide to building elegant, maintainable Node.js backends

This author seems to think he is clever and wants to show it off rather than impart actual useful knowledge. The book is a page turner, and not in a good way. The code example he references in this step by step approach isn’t always provided, so if you are coding along to actually learn what he is talking about you will constantly be turning the pages back and forth. He finally presents code after several steps, very poorly thought out from a pedagogical approach. Also he provides challenges at the end of chapters without solutions. Kind of useless from a learning perspective and lazy on the author’s part. When you finish the book you realize he didn’t really teach you much of anything. Backend programming is a solved problem (that is the whole point of express.js) and much of what he imparts here is gnawing on the bone. Router design is the only thing maybe of value. He also doesn’t seem to know much about Node.js and covers this very minimally when the topic is actually very expansive, so that was misleading. Considering that the book cost $41 and was self published, you’ll walk away from this book feeling ripped off.

The author copied a little bit of the express documentation and charged $37 for. The book is worth at most $5.

I think the tagline best summarizes this book: "A step-by-step guide to building elegant, maintainable Node.js backends." That's exactly what you get (not a catalog of design patterns or a deep-dive into functional programming), and it's delightful. By following the steps you'll build a backend API called Pony Express and test it using telnet and Insomnia REST client (both are free, in case you were worried). The author shows you a new piece of the application (setting up routes for CRUD, utilizing middleware, adding authentication and authorization) and then shows ways to do each piece more intelligently. Each step is explained so thoroughly and each code change is illustrated so clearly that the learning process is always engaging, never frustrating. Highly recommend this title.

I was learning Phoenix, the web app approach used by Elixir. I was struggling with the big picture approach useduntil I came across this book. This book explains how Express.js handles the request-response HTTP approach to build data servers and APIs used by client agents making HTTP requests to the server-side - the exact same approach used by Phoenix. This is not a cookbook for beginners to web apps - eventually you have to understand the big picture and abstractions of web apps if you intend to be a lifetime software developer. Great book.

It's a quick read (~130 pages) but the text doesn't take up the whole page, so I'd estimate to around 100.Very expensive considering the value of information in the book. I am disappointed.You're better off with 2-3 udemy courses, as Router Design pattern is pretty much the only thing that this book teaches.Waste of money.

Book is too short and solutions to challenges are missing. Practical aproach is fun to follow ...