Node.js Tutorial

Learn to build servers, APIs, and command-line tools with JavaScript — 54 lessons from Beginner to Advanced.

Learn Node.js from scratch — modules, the event loop, fs, streams, HTTP, Express, REST APIs, databases and testing — free interactive backend lessons.

👋 Know a little JavaScript? You're ready for Node.js.

Start with Lesson 1 and build real backend skills step by step — at your own pace.

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Lessons in this course

• Introduction to Node.js — What Node.js is, why it exists, and run your first JavaScript outside the browser
• Running Scripts & the REPL — Run .js files with node and experiment interactively in the REPL
• Modules (CommonJS & ESM) — Split code across files with require/module.exports and import/export
• npm & package.json — Manage dependencies and scripts with npm and a package.json file
• The Event Loop — Understand how Node runs non-blocking, asynchronous code on one thread
• Core Globals (process, __dirname) — Use process, __dirname, __filename, and other Node globals
• The fs Module — Read, write, and manage files with the built-in fs module
• Paths & OS — Build cross-platform paths with path and inspect the system with os
• Events & EventEmitter — Emit and listen for custom events with the EventEmitter class
• Streams & Buffers — Process large data efficiently with readable and writable streams
• The http Module — Make requests and understand the building blocks of HTTP in Node
• Building a Server — Create your own HTTP server with createServer and handle requests
• Routing by Hand — Send different responses based on the URL and HTTP method
• Async Patterns — Move from callbacks to promises to async/await for clean async code
• Error Handling — Handle errors in sync, callback, and async code without crashing
• Express Intro & Routing — Build web apps faster with the most popular Node framework
• Middleware — Run logic on every request with Express middleware functions
• REST APIs with Express — Design RESTful endpoints with proper verbs, status codes, and JSON
• Connecting a Database — Persist data by connecting your API to a real database
• Environment & Config — Manage secrets and settings with environment variables and .env files
• Testing (node:test) — Write automated tests with the built-in node:test runner
• CommonJS vs ES Modules — require/module.exports vs import/export, .cjs/.mjs, and interop pitfalls
• Buffers & Binary Data — Work with raw bytes using Buffer — from, alloc, encodings, and concat
• The process Object — Read argv, env, cwd, platform, and control the process lifecycle
• Timers & the Event Loop Phases — setTimeout, setImmediate, and process.nextTick ordering explained
• Child Processes (exec & spawn) — Run external programs with exec, execFile, spawn, and fork
• Worker Threads & Cluster — Run CPU-bound work off the main thread and scale across cores
• The crypto Module — Hash, HMAC, random bytes/UUIDs, and password KDFs with node:crypto
• Promises & async/await Deep Dive — all/allSettled/race/any, sequential vs parallel, and error handling
• Checkpoint: Node Core — Combine process, crypto and promises in a CLI build — then a quiz
• Advanced Streams: pipe & pipeline — pipe, stream.pipeline, backpressure, and custom Transform streams
• Express Routers & Route Organization — Structure routes with express.Router, params, and mounted sub-apps
• Request Validation (Zod & express-validator) — Validate and sanitize request input and return clean 400 errors
• JWT Authentication in Express — Issue and verify JWTs, protect routes, and hash passwords
• File Uploads with Multer — Handle multipart/form-data with disk and memory storage and limits
• Logging with morgan & pino — Add HTTP request logging and structured JSON logs with levels
• MongoDB with Mongoose — Define schemas and models and run CRUD queries with population
• Deploying Node (PM2 & Docker) — Production config, PM2, a Dockerfile, health checks, and graceful shutdown
• Checkpoint: Build a REST API — Combine validation, JWT auth and logging into a JSON API — then a quiz
• Scaling with the cluster Module — Use every CPU core by forking worker processes that share a port
• WebSockets (ws & Socket.IO) — Push real-time updates with persistent two-way connections
• GraphQL APIs — Query exactly what you need with schemas, resolvers, and Apollo
• SQL Databases with Sequelize — Model and query relational data with the Sequelize ORM
• Caching with Redis (ioredis) — Speed up apps with the cache-aside pattern and TTLs
• Security Best Practices — Harden Express with Helmet, CORS, rate limiting, and validation
• Building CLI Tools (commander) — Parse commands, options, and flags to ship a real CLI
• Publishing npm Packages — Configure package.json, semver, and publish to the npm registry
• Debugging & Profiling Node — Use the inspector, timers, and heap snapshots to find bugs and leaks
• Checkpoint: Production Backend — Combine caching, rate limiting and scaling in a build — then a quiz
• Capstone: A REST API — Tie everything together by building a complete REST API from scratch
• Message Queues with RabbitMQ — Decouple services with AMQP — channels, work queues, exchanges, and acks
• gRPC Services — Define services with Protocol Buffers and build fast unary and streaming RPCs
• Distributed Tracing — Trace requests across services with OpenTelemetry spans and context propagation
• Database Transactions & ACID — Keep data consistent with BEGIN/COMMIT/ROLLBACK, isolation levels, and deadlock handling

More for this course

• Node.js cheat sheet — Quick syntax reference you can scan while you code