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

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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