Re: What are your plans for node.js? How does npm work?

[Aaron Bartell <aaronbartell@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Vicki,

*>1) In general I'm wondering what thoughts/plans folks have for using
node.js on the i?  I'm thinking of a dashboard for monitoring.  It's all
totally new.*

An important thing to understand is how disconnected the browser is from
the server-side language**.  For example, you could produce the same
HTML/CSS/Javascript dashboard in the browser using COBOL or Node.js as the
server-side language.  That's not to say both will be equal in time to
implement.

**Web-sockets is an exception to my statement because it fundamentally
changed web programming for the better (my opinion):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WebSocket  I bring this up because Apache on
IBM i doesn't currently support the Apache mod required to do Websockets,
though I believe it isn't too far off.

*>I've done just enough Ruby on Rails (not on the i) to think I understand
that gem installation reaches out to the web to pick up the code.  Does npm
with node.js work the same way?  Will I be able to work around this? *

Not allowing the IBM i to act as a client and request URL's outside of your
network will be fairly painful when trying to develop Node.js apps and
inherently using npm (Node Package Manager, npmjs.com).  As a manual
stop-gap you could run "npm install" on another machine (i.e. laptop at a
coffee shop) and then copy the node_modules folder to IBM i.  A longer-term
solution would be to setup a local npm repository*** which isn't a bad idea
regardless of your firewall.  As Kevin stated, it seems short sighted to
not allow outbound access to the outside world from your IBM i.  Inbound
access is a little different because you do need to be more concerned about
how you've approached security.

***http://www.clock.co.uk/blog/how-to-create-a-private-npmjs-repository


Aaron Bartell
​
KrengelTech
Litmis Team - litmis.com​

On Wed, Jan 28, 2015 at 7:17 PM, Vicki Wilson <victwyh@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> Hi all,
> 2 questions:1) In general I'm wondering what thoughts/plans folks have for
> using node.js on the i?  I'm thinking of a dashboard for monitoring.  It's
> all totally new.
> 2) Is trying to use some of the open source solutions for node.js going to
> work on the i?  We are not actually allowed out of our firewall on the i.
> Last fall I wanted to use Scott Klement's json solutions but hit a brick
> wall when I couldn't reach out through the firewall.  Upside for me was I
> learned some c# - but sigh - I could have done it on the ibmi.
> So my second question shows how green I am.  I've done just enough Ruby on
> Rails (not on the i) to think I understand that gem installation reaches
> out to the web to pick up the code.  Does npm with node.js work the same
> way?  Will I be able to work around this?
> Vicki Wilson
>
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