Cloud9 IDE is an online development environment for
Javascript and Node.js applications as well as HTML, CSS, PHP, Java, Ruby and
23 other languages. Cloud9 IDE lets you build, debug, and run your Node.js
applications within the browser. Set breakpoints, follow the call stack, and
analyze your performance. In this post I’ll demonstrate how to build a simple
Node.js server app using Cloud9 IDE.
Creating a new
project:
Creating a project in Cloud 9 IDE requires an account which
is available as a free subscription at http://c9.io/.
After successful registration you can create a new project by adding a new project
form the dashboard.
After entering the project name you can select the type of
project to create
·
Git project: will allow you to run git commands
from the console and push your changes to Github
·
Mercurial: will allow you to run hg commands
form the console and push your changes to Bitbucket.
·
FTP: will allow you to upload your files
directly to an FTP server you have access to.
Select create after choosing a project type. Now, just click
Start Editing to get started!
You can right click on the selected project and add a ‘New
File’
Creating the
node.js server
We’ll create a simple
http server with controllers to handle the request and send the response to the
clients. Create a new loginController.js file and add the code given below.
exports.process = function handle(response) {
exports.process = function handle(response) {
response.writeHead(200);
response.end('<html>' +
'<head>' +
'<meta http-equiv="Content-Type"
content="text/html; ' +
'charset=UTF-8" />' +
'</head>' +
'<body>' +
'<form action="/login" method="post">' +
'Login name:<input type=text value=""
name="txtLogin" style="width: 100px"></br>' +
'Password
:<input type=password value="" name="txtPassword"
style="width: 100px"></br>' +
'<input type="submit" value="Login"
/> <input type="submit"
value="Cancel" />' +
'</form>' +
'</body>' +
'</html>');
The process property is assigned to an object called
'exports'. Such an 'exports' object is available in every module, and it is
returned whenever the required function is used to include the module. We can
now use this function as given below
var loginController = require('./handlers/loginController');
loginController.process(response);
Similarly you can create the other controllers and then the
http server like
var http = require('http');
var homeController = require('./handlers/homeController');
var loginController = require('./handlers/loginController');
var errorController = require('./handlers/errorController');
var port = process.env.PORT;
var requestListener = function(request, response)
{
switch(request.url)
{
case '/':
homeController.process(response);
break;
case '/login':
loginController.process(response);
break;
default:
errorController.process(response);
break;
}
}
var server = http.createServer(requestListener);
server.listen(port);
In the first line, we included the http core module and
assign it to a variable called http. Later we use this variable called server
by calling http.createServer().
You can also specify which port the server listens to. When
Node.js projects run within Cloud 9 IDE, you can retrieve the port information
with process.env.PORT. You can run the project by clicking the Debug button.
