The Little JavaScript Book
Last updated on 2020-05-25
About the Book
Why another book on JavaScript? I felt there was the need for a book which could take the reader by hand, challenging enough, yet concise. The Little JavaScript book saw its light originally in italian as "Il Piccolo Libro di JavaScript" and soon a lot of fellow developers asked for an english version.
What I did here however is not a 1 to 1 translation. "The Little JavaScript Book" is a creature on its own, with fresh contents and a different perspective.
In this book you'll learn (or re-learn) the "hard parts" of JavaScript without the gimmicky packaging that comes with some tutorials, and most important without arid academic lucubration. It aims to be a concise reference, while never peeking too much into the JavaScript spec.
Enjoy the reading!
About the Author
Table of Contents
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Intro. Few words about the book
- A brief history of the book
- Structure of the book
- Who this book is for?
- Typographic conventions
- What’s the best way for following the examples?
- Errata and other requests
- About the author
- Acknowledgments
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Intro. Few words about the book
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Part 1 - JavaScript, the “hard” parts
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Chapter 1. Getting started with JavaScript, and a glossary
- What is JavaScript?
- Why should I study JavaScript?
- ECMAScript, and other technical terms
- A special note on modern JavaScript
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Chapter 2. Prologue: JavaScript fundamentals
- Strings, numbers, variables and all in between
- Standing on the shoulders of a giant object
- 50 flavors of JavaScript functions
- JavaScript’s module system
- Conclusions
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Chapter 3. A whirlwind tour of JavaScript engines
- JavaScript engines and Global Memory
- Global Execution Context and Call Stack
- Asynchronous JavaScript, Callback Queue, and the Event Loop
- Callback hell and Promises
- Promises and error handling
- Promises and Microtask Queue
- More on Promise: combinators
- Dynamic imports
- Asynchronous evolution: from Promises to async/await
- Conclusions
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Chapter 4. Closures and modules in JavaScript
- Global madness
- Demystifying closures
- The need for closures
- Hoisting, we need to talk
- Conclusions
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Chapter 5. The secret life of JavaScript objects
- Everything is an object!
- Creating and linking objects
- Constructing JavaScript objects
- Checking the “linkage”
- Taking care of our JavaScript objects
- Class illusion
- Conclusions
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Chapter 6. “This” in JavaScript
- Demystifying “this”
- Rule number 1: falling back to the global “this”
- Rule number 2: when “this” is my host object
- Rule number 3: tell me who is “this”
- Rule number 4: “new” binding
- Arrow functions and “this”
- Conclusions
- BONUS exercise: Creeping into “this”
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Chapter 7. Types, conversion, and comparison in JavaScript
- Primitive types in JavaScript
- When a number becomes a string
- I’m not a number!
- Comparison operators: equal equal or not?
- Primitives and objects
- Conclusions
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Chapter 1. Getting started with JavaScript, and a glossary
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Part 2 - Working with JavaScript in the browser
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Chapter 8. Shaping HTML elements with JavaScript
- The Document Object Model
- Nodes, elements, and DOM manipulation
- DOM and events
- Generating HTML tables with JavaScript
- Code documentation in JavaScript with JSDoc
- How to dynamically add DOM elements with JavaScript
- Conclusions
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Chapter 9. Working with asynchronous JavaScript
- REST API and XMLHttpRequest
- XMLHttpRequest in action: generating lists with HTML and JavaScript
- Building HTML lists with JavaScript (and debugging classes)
- Asynchronous evolution: from XMLHttpRequest to Fetch
- Rebuilding the Fetch API from scratch (for fun and profit)
- Conclusions
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Chapter 10. HTML forms and playing with the storage API
- A re-introduction to HTML forms
- HTML forms in action
- Extracting data from an HTML form
- Getting to know localStorage and laying out our classes
- Interacting with localStorage and “this” comes to bite again
- Going idiomatic with FormData
- The formdata event
- Conclusions
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Chapter 11. First steps with TypeScript
- Laying down the foundations
- Getting started with TypeScript
- Digging deeper into TypeScript types
- TypeScript types, objects, and interfaces
- Narrowing types, Partial, and type aliases
- Assembling a TypeScript class
- Wiring up our classes and a bit of JSDoc
- ECMAScript private fields and the TypeScript private modifier
- Conclusions
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Chapter 8. Shaping HTML elements with JavaScript
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Part 3 - Appendix
- A delightful collection of little JavaScript recipes
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Solutions
- Chapter 2. Prologue: JavaScript fundamentals
- Chapter 4. Closures and modules in JavaScript
- Chapter 6. This in JavaScript
- Chapter 11. First steps with TypeScript
- Changelog
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