Running Node.js using Coffee-Script

Written on November 23, 2011

Creating node.js script is just a similar way when we created a client-side javascript source code. If you ever used rails 3.1.x i bet you had been implemented on how to use coffee-script in assets pipeline.

Wonder how to create coffee-script for node.js instead of regular javascript source code? Playing with coffee-script is a fun thing, how to make it? You need to install node.js at first including npm, then install the coffee-script for node.js. Since i’m using brew, i typed a command to install the formula:

npm install coffee-script

For sample we create a http server that respond to port 3000:

server = require('http').createServer (request, response) ->
  response.writeHead 200, {'Content-Type' : 'text/plain'}
  response.end 'Got it!\n'
server.listen 3000
console.log 'Server running at http://localhost:3000'

Save it in a file, for example server.coffee, and run it using coffee server.coffee (if the command not recognized try to run using coffee binary complete path, or create a symlink) when you called the url:

curl localhost:3ooo

Then it should response with:

Got it!