Using jQuery with node.js

Question

I have found out that you can use jQuery with node.js but all examples are for DOM and HTML manipulation.

Do you think using it for array iterations ( for each ) etc would be ok or a bit overkill?

Answer 1

Most of the common jQuery utilities are already in implemented in the V8 engine, which node.js is built on.

for example, compare:

• $.each with Array::forEach
• $.map with Array::map
• $.inArray with Array::indexOf
• $.trim with String::trim

One of the best things about node.js is that most of the ES5 spec is already there.

Answer 2

Underscore.js is a much smaller utility library for manipulating objects.

http://documentcloud.github.com/underscore/

npm install underscore

EDIT:

However, node.js has much better support for ES5 than browsers, and it's likely that you may not even need a library for manipulating objects. See keeganwatkins' answer.

Answer 3

NodeJS already has all the EcmaScript 5 Array Extras builtin. For example if you want all the odd squares:

[1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9].map(function(n){
    return n*n;
}).filter(function(n){
    return n%2;
});
//-> [1, 9, 25, 49, 81]

If you would like to see the other methods on the arrays, you can go to my JavaScript Array Cheat Sheet .

If you want the sum of all the cubes, you can:

[1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9].map(function(n){
    return n * n * n;
}).reduce(function(p, n){
    return p + n;
});
//-> 2025

Answer 4

jQuery has some nifty non-DOM features you can borrow -

https://github.com/jquery/jquery/tree/master/src

Just strip out what you do not need (like a reference to window).

Answer 5

If there are just a few functions you want to add, an alternative to adding a full library is to just implement the functions you want:

Many functions that are partially supported on some browsers are documented in MDN with compatibility code that can be used to add the function: Array.forEach