Introduction to Node.js Remote Modules

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This course has been updated! We now recommend you take the Introduction to Node.js, v2 course.

Transcript from the "Remote Modules" Lesson

[00:00:00]
>> Speaker 1: Cool, Remote Modules, the cool stuff. So, what are remote modules? Basically, you can download it and use other modules from the internet. That's basically it. You want some modules that somebody else made? Cuz most likely if you're making an app in Node, I'm 99% sure you're gonna use some modules from the internet.

[00:00:19] I just don't know how you wouldn't honestly? Maybe that sounds bad saying that.out loud, but yeah. You would be so inefficient to write anything big in Node and not download a module that makes it easy for you. It just would suck. There's some things where it's like, yeah, I can make this myself.

[00:00:36] But it's just easier to just pull something in that's already tested, that somebody already build, a lot of people are already using and just use it. So Node.js has grown a bunch, and a bunch of that growth is due to the community and the ability to share modules and consume them at will.

[00:00:53] Literally whenever you want, just pull it down. You can slap together an app really fast by reusing public modules, which are the same as modules you make, but they're packaged for downloading. So we've been making modules like what you just made on the last exercise because every file's a module.

[00:01:08] But just because it's a module, that doesn't mean it's ready to be used by another app by someone else. You gotta do some specific things to get that to happen, they can't just plug into your machine and take your code. You're not gonna e-mail them a folder with your modules like here, that's just gross right?

[00:01:24] That's really bad, there has to be a better way. So like I said, it sounds nice but you also have to be aware of malicious code right? If you're downloading code from the internet, you need to do some diligence to make sure it's not bad, and there's some couple things you can do that we'll go over.

[00:01:38] But yeah, it really is sometimes you just don't know. Hopefully somebody writes a Medium post about it later and warn everybody, but that's about it. You'd be surprised,
>> Speaker 1: It is very dangerous, but people use Node modules all the time. They're trying to fix it now and it's getting really crazy, but, yeah, it's just really bad.

[00:02:01] Also, you need a system to help with the management of the remote modules. So again, you can't just e-mail folders and modules around, so there has to be something you need to help uploading and updating, updating versions, and downloading and locking versions. You need something to manage all of that efficiently, so there is something for that.

Scott introduces modules created by other people on the internet, and why it's more efficient to utilize these than writing them from scratch. The community of Node js, public modules, and malicious modules are all discussed.