Usually, platforms such as Node.js are simple and minimal by design; this is why most of these platforms have some sort of system that allows you to download, install, and manage third-party extension packages called modules. For example, in Python, you have pip or easy install. In Node, you have NPM—the Node Package Manager.
NPM is both a package manager to install and remove modules from the system and a standard to define dependencies on other packages. It also provides a public registry service that contains all the Node.js modules that developers want to publish through NPM.
The RethinkDB module is also hosted on NPM, and we will use Node's package manager to install it.
Before attempting to install the module, you should check to see if NPM is installed on your system. If you have installed Node.js by following the instructions in the previous section of this chapter, you will already have NPM installed on your machine. If, however, you have installed Node...
