The 3D Web Coder

Athens AngelHack Hackathon, Node.js REST Workshop

I am in the middle of the preparations for a couple of events in June: AngelHack and I♥3D in Athens Node.js REST Workshop AngelHack and I♥3D in Athens I am already on my way to the second I love 3D – Athens meetup on June 5th in The Cube, Greece's biggest coworking space, followed by the AngelHack hackathon coming weekend. I am travelling there via a detour sleeping out on the beaches of Euboea Island, on which I already visited... Read more →

Node.js REST API Enhancement and VR Party

Let's get back to looking at node.js, a REST API implementation, and a recent San Francisco virtual reality hackathon project: Node.js REST API enhancement Top ten nodejs mistakes Kean's VR party Node.js REST API enhancement My colleagues Cyrille and Philippe were not very impressed with one aspect of my previous node WebGL viewer server REST API implementation. Both suggested that each API module implement and export its own router instead of just defining and exporting individual functions. The main reason... Read more →

Radical Node Server View and Heroku Push Cleanup

Two days ago, I implemented an enhancement to the node server REST API of my WebGL viewer and its interactive testing framework suggested by my colleague Cyrille Fauvel. He also suggested applying a whole host of other best practices to separate content, styles and logic. I am quite impressed that I succeeded in breaking so many rules implementing such a small project. I am very happy and find it extremely important to get them corrected early on. Many thanks to... Read more →

Cleaner Node Server REST API Implementation

My colleague Cyrille Fauvel provided some suggestions for me to apply various best practices to my Node.js WebGL viewer server implementation and its interactive testing framework: Criteria to choose the rendering engine? Eliminate explicit request method checking Complete node.js server implementation Download Criteria to choose the rendering engine Question: You listed a couple of different rendering engines, then picked Swig, not EJS. Can you explain why? I use EJS myself. Answer: I picked the ones that looked smallest and easiest... Read more →

Node Server Rendering with either Swig or Handlebars

My previous step towards implementing a minimal WebGL viewer node server showed how to render 3D geometric POST data using Swig. Due to various self-created difficulties, I switched the rendering engine to Swig after struggling with initial attempts using Express Handlebars. Now that those difficulties have been solved, I thought I would show how to switch back to the handlebars support and prove that I use either one. They cannot be used in parallel, though, since the rendering engine is... Read more →

POST Data and Swig Driven WebGL Viewer Node Server

In my previous step towards a node server implementing a handy minimal WebGL viewer, I started added support for handling a REST API POST request. Now that we have transferred and received data, let's implement code to display it: Adding JSON support Picking a Node view engine How to reference JavaScript modules in the template file – or not? Transferring data to the view template Complete node.js server implementation Interactive testing framework Download Adding JSON Support My initial tests were... Read more →

Implementing Node Server HTTP POST, GET vs POST

In my previous step towards implementing a handy minimal WebGL viewer, I started equipping it with a REST API. Now I'll expand that just a little bit by adding support for POST requests as well: HTTP GET and POST limitations HTTP GET implementation starting point Struggles implementing the POST handler Complete GET and POST implementation Interactive testing framework Download What next? HTTP GET and POST Limitations So far, my miniscule REST API just implements a placeholder skeleton returning v1: Hello... Read more →

Implementing a Node REST API Server

Now that our node.js web server is Heroku-hosted live on the web, we can talk with it through text, view 2D SVG graphics, drive it from a desktop app, implement a 3D WebGL viewer and feed that geometry data from the desktop as well... ... let's start interacting with it on a more professional basis. Time to implement an API, aka Application Programming Interface. Together with other interesting little titbits, this leads to the following topics: JavaScript style guide REST... Read more →

WebGL Node Server with GitHub and Heroku Repo Sync

Yesterday, I discussed a proof of concept for a simple desktop driven 3D geometry WebGL viewer. I want to enhance it in a number of ways: Reimplement it as a Heroku-hosted node.js web server Provide the geometrical data to display through query string input arguments Remove the scaling to the -1 to 1 2-unit box Support integer arguments for the geometry definition Add support to define rendering colours Let's start at the top of the list and host the 3D... Read more →

Driving the SVG Node Server from a Desktop Application

Yesterday, I implemented a pretty minimal Heroku-hosted node.js web server and used it to display some SVG graphics. I implemented a little interactive form and used the following JavaScript snippet to invoke the server and submit the data entered to it: function submit_form_svg_01(path_data) { var local = false; var base_url = local ? 'http://127.0.0.1:5000' : 'https://shielded-hamlet-1585.herokuapp.com'; var w = 400; var h = 400; var d = path_data.replace(' ','+'); var query_string = 'w='+w+'&h='+h+'&d='+d; window.open(base_url + '?' + query_string, 'node_server', 'width='... Read more →

Displaying 2D Graphics via a Node Server

Now that our node.js web server is hosted by Heroku, running live on the web, and even generating nonsensical source code in six different programming languages for April 1st, let's move on to something more interesting and graphical. First, briefly, a couple of other short news items and topics of general and personal interest: WebGL 3D model viewing on mobile devices A360 drag and drop viewer View and Data API design file formats Useful JavaScript resources Augmented reality Is Angular... Read more →

A ProgGen Web Service Program Generator Node Server

Now that our node.js web server is hosted by Heroku and up and running live on the web, let's start talking with it. As I already hinted, I would like to move into graphical topics as quickly as possible, e.g., by sending a string of polygon coordinate values and asking it to render them as a 2D polygon. Before getting to that, though, a very exciting non-graphical usage is offered by the new Autodesk ProgGen Web Service. ProgGen is a... Read more →

Hosting a Node Server on Heroku, Pages and 3D Web

Lots of topics lined up for today! The real meat that we are hungering for is hosting and running our node app live on the web. There's much more, though: Hosting The 3D Web Coder source HTML and index on GitHub pages A much cooler GitHub pages sample The 3D web is happening here and now The Milan WebGL Workshop Hosting a node server on Heroku Testing a node server live on this page Hosting The 3D Web Coder Source... Read more →

Processing Query Strings in JavaScript and Node

Working our way towards our first full-fledged web application, we looked at the following steps so far: The web enabled Brackets editor The Node.js server platform Sample JavaScript function to process query strings Now let's move on to grab and process real query strings, first in a naked stand-alone JavaScript sample, then in a node.js server. Once we have that in place, we can move on to further interesting aspects such as using them to drive 2D and 3D graphics... Read more →

The Node.js Server Platform, Icons, 3D and the Future

So, still wanting to write some web application code, are we? Since yesterday, we have a suitable editor in place. Another helpful component is a web server. Node.js is an open source, cross-platform JavaScript runtime environment for server-side and networking applications, providing an event-driven architecture and a non-blocking I/O API that optimizes throughput and scalability for real-time web applications. We can use that to build a web server. This simple web server written in Node and highlighted on the node.js... Read more →