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The Process Object
7:38We have the response body as a String. Let's convert it into an Object so that we can access the data more programmatically.
Let's add some finishing touches to our
functionality and do some cleaning up.
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I'll rearrange these comments.
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It appears there's still more work to do.
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We want to print out a message
containing profile information,
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so let's add a function to handle
printing our badge and point totals.
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I've included a snippet for
you to copy in the teacher's notes.
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Put this at the top.
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Save.
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Remember, for
our app we went the badgeCount and
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JavaScript points printed out.
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Next, let's store our parse response or
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body in its own variable so
we can work with it better.
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We'll name this profile.
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Now we can access the badges and
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points as properties
on the profile object.
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We'll call the printMessage function.
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We'll add a call to
the printMessage function, but
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there's one more thing we
need to do before that.
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Our code is inflexible, it only searches
for the username hard coded into the URL.
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Let's allow this function to take
the username as an argument.
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We'll make the string a template literal.
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So we can interpolate
the username variable here.
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Okay?
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Now down in printMessage,
we can pass in username.
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Next, we'll access
the badges on the profile.
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And badges is an array,
so we'll use length.
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And finally, we'll access the points.
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I'll save that.
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Add a call to getProfile with the new
username, or the same username.
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Let's make sure this is a string.
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Now, when we run Node app.js,
We get our message.
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Carlos has 236 total badges and...
uh-oh
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let's use console.dir check out
the points property once more.
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Run the app again.
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And the points property is an object.
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A property of that object is JavaScript.
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That's the total we want, so
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we'll use that notation to
access the JavaScript property.
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Now we'll remove console.dir.
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Save again.
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Perfect.
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Carlos has 236 total badges and
10,381 points in JavaScript.
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In the browser, we have a global window
object that stores information about
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a given window.
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Node has its own global object,
it's called the process.
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The process contains information about
the location of Node on your computer,
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as well as the file being executed and
any arguments we enter at execution.
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We can log out the process object
to examine it ourselves using dir.
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One important property is argv
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Let's clear
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this up.
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And run the app.
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Again, we get a lot of information.
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One important argument is argv.
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Argv gives us the node binary file,
our app.js, and
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it normally contains an array of
arguments we enter into the command line.
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Let's try this.
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Now argv contains the two arguments
I entered after node app js.
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We can use this to our
advantage in our program.
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In our program, we can access argv and
store the arguments entered.
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Create a variable called users.
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We don't need the first two arguments,
so we can use the slice method to get
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rid of those and only store the command
line arguments entered after.
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Save. Now,
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our getProfile function
doesn't take an array.
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However, we can use the forEach method,
to call the getProfile function for
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any names entered.
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We'll remove this call,
our other console.dir statement.
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Again, clear this up,
try something a little different here.
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I'll enter both Carlos Salgado and
Jennifer Nordell.
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Carlos has 236 badges,
while Jennifer has 1,625.
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Excellent job.
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You've learned about connecting to an API,
retrieving data, and
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accessing command line
arguments in your program.
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You're getting a handle on node,
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and can demonstrate some of the benefits
of its asynchronous nature.
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Our app is working great,
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but what if there is an error
trying to connect to the API?
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Or you've accidentally spelled
something incorrectly in URL?
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Coming up, we'll find out how we can
watch out for errors in our node apps and
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how asynchronous programs
handle errors differently.
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