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Course Glossary

API

An Application Programming Interface (API) provides a set of rules to describe how developers can interact with a service or platform. In the context of web development, rules often contain HTTP methods, endpoints, and expected incoming data.

Body Parser

Body Parser parses incoming requests to your Node.js application automatically, and makes it available inside of route handlers via req.body.

console.log()

This can be run in JavaScript files to show the content of the brackets in your console. It is useful for testing.

Comments

Comments are stored in your code files, but are not run. They can be used to provide descriptions, or notes to yourself or other developers working on your project.

CRUD

CRUD describes the four main database operations - create, read, update and delete.

CSS

CSS is a style sheet language used to apply presentation rules to your web pages. For each rule, there is a selector which targets one or more HTML elements, and then a set of declarations, each made from a property and value.

Doctype

Doctypes exist at the top of HTML documents, and tell the browser which version of HTML is being used.

Document Object Model

The DOM contains a data representation of your webpage, and is created by the browser when loading HTML files. It can later be accessed and manipulated through JavaScript.

Dotenv

Dotenv allows your Node.js application to load environment variables from a .env file. it is published on npm.

Express.js

Express.js is a web application framework, which makes it easier to build web applicatiosn that respond to incoming requests. It is published on npm.

HTML

A markup language that allows developers to describe the content and structure of a web page. HTML is made up of tags, which describe the type of content they contain.

HTML attributes

Attributes consist of a property and a value, and provide more information about an element to the browser.

HTML head & body tags

The head tag contains information about the page that is not displayed inside of the main part of the web page. The body tag contains content the user sees in the page.

Long Virtual Numbers

Long Virtual Numbers are programmable phone numbers made available by Vonage. They can be used to make or receive phone calls and SMS messages.

Nodemon

Nodemon is a utility which automatically restarts your Node.js server when it detects that files have been changed.

npm

npm stands for Node Package Manager and is the default repository for Node.js packages. Developers can publish pieces of code for other developers to incorporate in their projects.

Nunjucks

Nunjucks is a templating language which can be used with Node.js to render webpages with variables, loops and conditionals. It is published on npm.

Route handler

Route handlers in Express.js provide a way to differentiate incoming requests. They are made of of a HTTP Method (GET, POST, etc) and an endpoint (/, /hello, /:namem, etc).

Static websites

Websites that are delivered to the browser exactly as they are stored - they are not altered by the server.

Webhook

A webhook is an incoming HTTP request, from an external server to your application. You should respond to them.