The Little JavaScript Book

Intro. Few words about the book.

1. A brief history of the book
2. Structure of the book
3. Who this book is for?
4. Typographic conventions
5. What’s the best way for following the examples?
6. Errata and other requests
7. About the author
8. Acknowledgments
9. Part 1 - JavaScript, the “hard” parts

Chapter 1. Getting started with JavaScript, and a glossary.

1. The importance of being JavaScript
2. ECMAScript, and other technical terms
3. A special note on modern JavaScript

Chapter 2. Prologue: JavaScript fundamentals.

1. Strings, numbers, variables and all in between
2. The more you know
3. Standing on the shoulders of a giant object
4. 50 flavors of JavaScript functions
5. JavaScript’s module system
6. Conclusions

Chapter 3. A whirlwind tour of JavaScript engines.

1. JavaScript engines and Global Memory
2. Global Execution Context and Call Stack
3. Asynchronous JavaScript, Callback Queue, and the Event Loop
4. Callback hell and Promises
5. Promises and error handling
6. Promises and Microtask Queue
7. More on Promise: combinators
8. Dynamic imports
9. Asynchronous evolution: from Promises to async/await
10. Conclusions

Chapter 4. Closures and modules in JavaScript.

1. Global madness
2. Demystifying closures
3. The need for closures
4. Hoisting, we need to talk
5. Conclusions

Chapter 5. JavaScript encounters of the third kind (with objects!)

1. Everything is an object!
2. Creating and linking objects
3. Constructing JavaScript objects
4. Checking the linkage
5. Taking care of JavaScript objects
6. Class illusion
7. Conclusions
8. Sharpen up your JavaScript skills

Chapter 6. This in JavaScript.

1. Demystifying this
2. Rule number 1: falling back to the global this
3. Rule number 2: when this is my host object
4. Rule number 3: tell me who is this
5. Rule number 4: new binding
6. Arrow functions and this
7. Conclusions
8. Sharpen up your JavaScript skills
9. BONUS exercise: Creeping into this

Chapter 7. Types, coercion, and comparison in JavaScript.

1. Primitive types in JavaScript
2. When a number becomes a string
3. I’m not a number!
4. Comparison operators: equal equal or not?
5. Primitives and objects
6. Conclusions
7. Sharpen up your JavaScript skills
8. Part 2 - Working with JavaScript in the browser

Chapter 8. Shaping HTML elements with JavaScript.

1. The Document Object Model
2. Nodes, elements, and DOM manipulation
3. DOM and events
4. How to dynamically add DOM elements with JavaScript
5. Conclusions

Chapter 9. Working with asynchronous JavaScript.

1. REST API and XMLHttpRequest
2. XMLHttpRequest in action: generating lists with HTML and JavaScript
3. Building HTML lists with JavaScript (and debugging classes)
4. Asynchronous evolution: from XMLHttpRequest to Fetch
5. Rebuilding Fetch API from scratch (for fun and profit)
6. What’s a polyfill?
7. Conclusions

Chapter 10. HTML forms and playing with the storage API.

1. A re-introduction to HTML forms
2. HTML forms in action
3. Extracting data from an HTML form
4. Getting to know localStorage and laying out our classes
5. Interacting with localStorage and this comes to bite again
6. Going idiomatic with FormData
7. The formdata event
8. Conclusions

Chapter 11. First steps with TypeScript.

1. Laying down the foundations
2. Getting started with TypeScript
3. Digging deeper into TypeScript types
4. TypeScript types, objects, and interfaces
5. Narrowing types, Partial, and type aliases
6. Assembling a TypeScript class
7. Wiring up our classes and a bit of JSDoc
8. ECMAScript private fields and the TypeScript private modifier
9. Conclusions
10. Part 3 - Appendix

A delightful collection of little JavaScript recipes

Solutions

1. Chapter 2. Prologue: JavaScript fundamentals
2. Chapter 4. Closures and modules in JavaScript
3. Chapter 6. This in JavaScript
4. Chapter 11. First steps with TypeScript

Changelog