install node.js

Installing node.js

As mine was a clean Ubuntu installation, I needed to install certain libraries first.

sudo apt-get install g++ curl libssl-dev apache2-utils

The easiest way is to download node.js is to get a git clone. For that I needed to install the git package.

sudo apt-get install git-core

Now download node.js with git.

git clone git://github.com/ry/node.git

If you do not want to use git you could get the tar package instead.

wget http://nodejs.org/dist/node-v0.1.96.tar.gz gunzip node-v0.1.96.tar.gz tar -xf node-v0.1.96.tar

Now you are ready to install node.js.

cd node ./configure make sudo make install

Example node.js code

Below is a simple program using node.js for translating text using google API.

var http = require('http');   var url = ('ajax.googleapis.com') var google = http.createClient(80, url);   var text = "Hello World from node!"; var requestUrl = '/ajax/services/language/translate?v=1.0&q=' + escape(text) + '&langpair=en%7Cfr' var request = google.request('GET', requestUrl, {"host": "ajax.googleapis.com"}); request.end();   request.addListener('response', function (response) { var body = '';   response.addListener('data', function (chunk) { body += chunk; });   response.addListener("end", function() { var jsonData = JSON.parse(body); console.log(jsonData.responseData.translatedText); })   });

This simple example does not to justice to the true power of node.js. I’ll be posting useful examples in the near future. Keep watching.