Nice Pretty Modules

lodash

• Inspired by underscore.js, but better
• Core data structure helper functions
• functional programming, inheritence, polyfills
• I use it in nearly every project
• ECMAScript 5 Array prototype has .map, .forEach, .filter, which I use

["Monday", "Tuesday", "Wednesday"].forEach(function(day) {
  //Don't need lodash for this. Native is OK.
});

const _ = require("lodash");
const user = {
  name: "Bob",
  email: "bob@example.com",
  shoeSize: 11
};
const variant = _.pick(user, "name", "email");
console.log(variant);
//{ name: 'Bob', email: 'bob@example.com' }

lodash functions I use frequently

• _.pick
• _.pluck
• _.last
• _.without
• _.uniq
• _.flatten
• _.debounce, _.throttle
• _.omit

Testing

• mocha.js best testing framework
• expectacle least insane expactation library
• sinon.js spies, mocks, stubs
• rewire dependency injection

Web Apps

• browserify Bundle browser JS without reaching for the FaceAxe
  • brfs for loading static files as strings
  • browserify-shim for third party stuff (angularjs)
• browserify-middleware almost-perfect dev/prod workflow
• cheerio for server-side HTML parsing and manipulation
• supertest for testing express.js apps end to end
• stylus for CSS preprocessing (better than LESS, SASS, SCSS)
• bunyan for logging
• passport.js for authentication with bcrypt for password hashing

async.js

Still my go-to flow control library. There are lots of good choices here, though.

moment.js

Painfully awesome library for Date parsing and manipulation

moment().add(7, 'days').toDate()
Thu Jul 03 2014 12:27:00 GMT-0600 (MDT)

AVOID: Bad (but popular) modules

• should.js
• mongoose.js
• requirejs: browserify FTW (see also webpack)
• anything based on the Ruby on Rails asset pipeline

Quagmires: Still no clear winners

• Database layers ORM/ODM
• SQL dialect managers, query libraries
• expectation libraries (expectacle is closest)
• JSON validation

Misc tips about searching for modules

• alternative/rewrites usually better
  • requirejs -> browserify
  • jasmine -> mocha
  • jsdom -> cheerio
  • q -> bluebird (probably...)
• Get familiar with prolific, high-quality authors
• actively maintained
• sensible documentation

Misc tips continued...

• nothing bizarre
• small, focused
• See also substack's Finding Modules article

Use caution for highly expensive switching costs

Try out in a small side project first

• logging
• assertions/expectations
• control flow
• any framework
• DB access and abstractions

The End

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