Reliable JavaScript

696 Pages·2015·10.27 MB·English

®
Reliable JavaScript
Lawrence D. Spencer
Seth H. Richards
®
Reliable JavaScript
Published by
John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
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Indianapolis, IN 46256
www.wiley.com
Copyright © 2015 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Indianapolis, Indiana
Published simultaneously in Canada
ISBN: 978-1-119-02872-7
ISBN: 978-1-119-02873-4 (ebk)
ISBN: 978-1-119-02874-1 (ebk)
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We dedicate this book to all JavaScript developers
who work hard to hone their craft. You are making the
world a more beautiful place.
CREDITS
PROJECT EDITOR
Christina Haviland
TECHNICAL EDITORS
Keith Pepin
John Peloquin
PRODUCTION MANAGER
Kathleen Wisor
COPY EDITOR
Nancy Rapoport
MANAGER OF CONTENT DEVELOPMENT & ASSEMBLY
Mary Beth Wakefield
MARKETING DIRECTOR
David Mayhew
MARKETING MANAGER
Carrie Sherrill
PROFESSIONAL TECHNOLOGY & STRATEGY DIRECTOR
Barry Pruett
BUSINESS MANAGER
Amy Knies
ASSOCIATE PUBLISHER
Jim Minatel
PROJECT COORDINATOR, COVER
Brent Savage
PROOFREADER
Nancy Carrasco
INDEXER
Johnna VanHoose Dinse
COVER DESIGNER
Wiley
COVER IMAGE
© Getty Images/Andrew Rich

ABOUT THE AUTHORS
LARRY SPENCER is Vice President of Application Development at ScerIS, a
software and services company in Sudbury, Massachusetts. He and his team
create browser-based applications in AngularJS, with a C#/Web API/SQL
Server back end. Larry's 35-year career has included stints programming in
COBOL, C, C++, C#, and even mainframe assembly language, but he says
JavaScript is the most fun. A frequent speaker at Code Camps and other
gatherings, Larry enjoys sharing his love of software with the development
community. You can find his blog at http://FascinatedWithSoftware.com.
Larry's outside interests include philosophy, chess, and classical guitar. He
lives in Marlborough, Massachusetts.
SETH RICHARDS has been crafting software professionally since 2002. He
got his start programming embedded devices for the bar and nightclub
industry and transitioned to web application development in 2007. He has
worked on numerous web-based applications ranging from an enterprise-
class geographic information system–centric physical asset management
system to a social network for product discovery and recommendation.
Seth graduated from Plymouth State College (now University) in Plymouth,
New Hampshire, where he studied computer science and mathematics. He is
currently pursuing his M.S. in Computer Science from the Georgia Institute
of Technology. Seth's blog can be found at http://blog.shrichards.com, and
he can be followed on Twitter at @shrichards.
ABOUT THE TECHNICAL EDITORS
KEITH PEPIN has been developing sites and applications on the web for
over 17 years. Early in his career, he fell in love with JavaScript and has been
passionately building dynamic user experiences ever since. He is currently a
Senior Software Engineer at Meltwater, and is using HTML5, CSS3,
JavaScript, AngularJS, Node.js, and MongoDB to build the next generation of
their online marketing intelligence platform. When not coding or spending
time with his family, he enjoys other geeky pursuits, including all forms of
games, comic books, painting, and sketching.
JOHN PELOQUIN is a software engineer with over 10 years of JavaScript
experience ranging across applications of all sizes. John earned his B.A. in
Mathematics from U.C. Berkeley and is currently a lead engineer at Spreemo,
a healthcare technology startup in NYC. Prior to editing this volume, John
edited Professional Website Performance by Peter Smith (Wiley 2012) and
Professional JavaScript for Web Developers, 3rd ed. by Nicholas Zakas (Wiley
2012). When he is not coding or collecting errata, John can occasionally be
found doing stand-up comedy at an open mic.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Thank you to my wife, Bethany, for her love and support while we wrote this
book, and for enduring (or enjoying?) many husband-less nights and
weekends while I worked to meet a deadline.
–SETH RICHARDS
Thanks to my family for encouraging me to pursue my dreams. My dreams
may include writing a book, but they begin and end with you.
–LARRY SPENCER
This book would not have been possible without the willingness of others to
share their knowledge and expertise with us and the community at large in
book, blog, and source-code format. Together, we'd like to acknowledge and
thank:
Douglas Crockford, for his exposure of good parts of JavaScript and his
work on jsLint.
Nicolas Zakas, for the numerous books and blog posts he wrote that acted
as guides through JavaScript's sometimes-treacherous waters, and also his
maintenance of and contributions to ESLint.
Stoyan Stefanov, for his instruction on applying pattern-based
development to JavaScript.
Robert C. Martin, for instilling in us the desire to write clean code.
Fredrik Appelberg, for his creation of, and Dave Clayton for his
contributions to, the AOP.js aspect-oriented programming framework.
Mike Bostock, for inspiring us with the D3 library for SVG graphics.
The folks at Pivotal Labs, for the creation of the open-source JavaScript
framework Jasmine, and members of the community that have
contributed to the framework.
The AngularJS team, for showing the world a great way to build single-
page applications.
The vast and growing network of generous people on sites such as Stack
Overflow and GitHub. Without you, we'd still be thumbing through
manuals.
We would also like to express our appreciation to our project editor, Chris
Haviland, who deftly maneuvered us through the writing process from
beginning to end. Our copy editor, Nancy Rapoport, has read our book more
carefully, and more times, than anyone else ever will. For her dedication and
suggestions we offer heartfelt thanks. We would also like to express our
sincerest thanks to our technical editors, Keith Pepin and John Peloquin.
Their JavaScript prowess helped us avoid more than a few technical errors.
Should any errors still exist, it's likely because we didn't follow some of their
advice. Our hats are off to you, gentlemen.
Finally, we'd like to thank Carol Long, the Executive Acquisitions Editor at
Wiley, who gave us the opportunity to write this book. Without her, we'd still
just be a couple of guys that write software for a living. We're still that, but
now we're authors, too. Carol announced her retirement from the publishing
industry just before we finished the book. We sure hope we weren't the straw
that broke the camel's back! Thank you, Carol, and we wish you nothing but
sunny days and margaritas in your retirement.
–LARRY AND SETH