Node v14.17.0 (LTS) Released — If you want to stay on a nice, safe LTS release but still get modern features backported in when they're ready, this is for you. Here's what's new this time:

• Diagnostics Channel support. A way to create named channels to report arbitrary message data for diagnostics purposes.
• UUID support in the crypto module.
• Experimental support for AbortController and AbortSignal and AbortSignal support added to numerous methods.
• Backporting of various V8 patches for Apple Silicon support.

Node.js

Redis 6.2 on RedisGreen — SSL encryption, key size tracking, memory mapping, online upgrades, and more.

RedisGreen sponsor

zx: A Tool for Writing Better Shell Scripts — Rather than turn to Python or bash to throw together a shell script, stick with the Node you know and love – zx makes it easier with some handy functions for calling other programs, processing their output and results, changing directory, etc.

Google

Why JWT Should Not Be Your Default for Sessions — “My point in all this is not to discourage the use of JWT in general, but be deliberate and careful when you do. Be aware of both the security and functionality trade-offs and pitfalls.”

Evert Pot

The Node.js Docker Cheatsheet — This is derived from 10 Best Practices to Containerize Node Web Apps with Docker by Liran Tal and Yoni Goldberg but is now an official OWASP cheatsheet.

OWASP

How to Implement a Simple Task Queue in Node — How to implement a simple queue in so as to manage the execution of long-running tasks and prevent bottlenecks.

Craig Buckler

[Free Download] Guide to Effective Feature Management — Learn feature management practices to accelerate release cycles and deploy every 6 hours, instead of every 6 weeks.

LaunchDarkly sponsor

a12n-server: A 'Ready-to-Launch' User and Authentication System — A simple authentication system for developers considering building their own. Works to OAuth2 standards where applicable and supports multi-factor auth via TOTP or WebauthN / Yubikeys.

Curveball

ShellJS: Portable Unix Shell Commands for Node — I loved Ian Langworth’s review of this on Hacker News: “ShellJS was a delight to use when we had to build a cross platform Electron-based (sorry) desktop application for Mac and Windows. It replaced batch and shell scripts, async operations were easy thanks to NodeJS, and the scripts were maintainable. 8/10, would use again.”

ShellJS

Useful Tools for Parsing and Annotating PDFs in Node — Nothing beats an article by someone who’s just had to do the thing being covered.

Jing Fan

Observability Won’t Replace Monitoring (Because It Shouldn’t)

Lightstep sponsor

Meow 10.0: A Straightforward CLI App Helper — You define flags, help text, and other features in a single object and it handles all the processing for you.

Sindre Sorhus

node-mssql 7.0: A Microsoft SQL Server Client for Node — Works cross-platform (Windows, Linux or macOS) and supports two different TDS drivers.

Patrik Simek and contributors