How to Add a Timeout to Promises in Node.js

Even though Node.js has great out-of-the-box support for asynchronous programming and promises with its async/await syntax, it doesn’t include the ability to add a timeout to these promises. I had to deal with this on a recent React Native project while integrating with a third-party library. This library had a number of functions that were […]

Updating AWS Lambda Function Code when Local Files Change

For my project, we have a Node.js server deployed as an AWS Lambda function. The server’s dependencies (Node modules) are deployed in a Lambda layer. We want an easy process to deploy a new Lambda layer version when we update the Node modules and to update the Lambda function code whenever we update the local […]

Creating a Simple Server with Next.js

It can take a long time to get a full-stack React and Node.js app off the ground. Fortunately, with the addition of API Routes, Next.js offers a way to do that in just minutes.

Document Your Project’s package.json File

The package.json file is the heart of any Node.js project, but it often goes entirely undocumented. In this post, I’ll review a few areas that are worth documenting, and how I like to do it.

Setting up a Test FTP Server in Node

On a recent project, I had a need to create an FTP connection to a third-party server. Since we had no control over the server, I also wanted to setup a test FTP server that I could use to run our client against to make sure we could connect successfully. It turned out that implementing […]

Generating Excel Files using Node.js and ExcelJS

Recently, I was tasked with writing some code to generate Excel workbooks containing sales data. I implemented the code using a Node module called ExcelJS. I found that this module provides a simple interface to generating documents, and it also supports more advanced functions such as text formatting, borders, formulae, and more.

Managing Data Loaders in Node.js with Shared State

When developing software, it’s always tough to work with caching. While my team appreciates the efficiencies that Data Loader can provide for applications, we still struggle with the same problems that always come up when caching queries, mainly invalidating caches when a data set has changed.

Eliminate Circular Dependencies from Your JavaScript Project

Circular dependencies (also known as cyclic dependencies) occur when two or more modules reference each other. This could be a direct reference (A -> B -> A): // file a.ts import { b } from 'b'; ... export a; // file b.ts import { a } from 'a'; ... export b; or indirect (A -> […]

Extending the Heroku Timeout in Node.js

Heroku will terminate a request connection if no data is sent back to the client within 30 seconds. From Heroku’s Router – HTTP timeouts documentation: HTTP requests have an initial 30-second window in which the web process must return response data (either the completed response or some amount of response data to indicate that the […]

PDF Snapshot Testing with Node and GraphicsMagick

The task I am working on this week involves generating downloadable PDF files for customer and supplier orders. We’d like to drive the implementation using tests and be able to find any regressions in the code automatically. After looking at different alternatives for accomplishing this, we decided to try a visual snapshot approach similar to […]

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