What Makes Node.Js Powerful & Why Should You Choose It For Your Next Project?
JavaScript's increasing success has taken with it a lot of change, and the face of web development today is radically different. Stuff that we can do on the web today with JavaScript running on the server, as well as in the browser, were hard to conceive a few years back or were encapsulated in sandboxed environments like Flash or Java Applets.
Before diving into Node.js solutions, you may want to learn about the advantages of using JavaScript through a stack that unifies the language and data format (JSON) such that you can optimally reuse developer resources. Because this is more of a contribution to JavaScript than to Node.js directly, we're not going to explore it much here. But it's a key benefit to incorporate Node in your stack.
As Wikipedia says, "Node.js is a bundled compilation of the Google V8 JavaScript engine, the libuv interface abstraction layer, and the core library, which is itself mainly written in JavaScript." After that, it's worth remembering that Ryan Dahl, the developer of Node.js, was trying to build real-time websites with push capabilities, "inspired by applications like Gmail." In Node.js, he gave developers a tool to work on a non-blocking, event-driven I / O paradigm.
After more than 20 years of stateless web-based on a stateless request-response paradigm, we actually have web applications with real-time, two-way connections.
In one sentence, Node.js shines in real-time web applications using network socket push technologies. What's so groundbreaking about that? Well, after more than 20 years of stateless web-based request-response model, we finally have web applications with real-time, two-way communications where both the client and the server will initiate communication, enabling them to freely exchange data. This contrasts strongly with the typical web response paradigm, where the client often initiates communication. In fact, it is all based on the open web stack (HTML, CSS and JS) running over the standard port 80.
With all its advantages, Node.js now plays a vital role in the technology stack of several high-profile companies that depend on its unique advantages. The Node.js Foundation has outlined all the latest ideas about which companies should accept Node.js in a concise overview that can be found on the Node.js Foundation's Case Studies page.
How Does It Work?
Node.js' core idea: using non-blocking, event-driven I/O to stay lightweight and powerful when faced with data-intensive real-time applications operating across distributed networks.
That's a mouthful.
What it truly does say is that Node.js is not a silver-bullet new platform that dominates the field of web development. Rather it's a platform that serves a particular need.
Node.js is not a silver-bullet new platform which dominates the world of web development. Rather it's a platform that serves a particular need. And it is completely important that we realize this. You probably don't want to use Node.js for CPU-intensive operations; in fact, using Node.js for heavy processing would annul virtually all its benefits. Where node really shines is when it comes to developing fast, scalable network applications, because it can handle a huge amount of simultaneous connections with high throughput, which is equal to high scalability.
It's pretty cool how it operates under the hood. Node.js runs on a single thread, using non-blocking I / O calls, allowing it to accept hundreds of thousands of concurrent connections kept in the event loop, opposed to standard web-serving techniques where each connection (request) spawns a new thread, takes up system RAM and eventually maxes out at the amount of RAM available.
NPM: The Node Package Manager
When addressing Node.js, one thing that can certainly not be ignored is built-in package management support using NPM, a tool that comes with any Node.js installation by default. The concept of NPM modules is somewhat close to that of Ruby Gems: a collection of freely accessible, interchangeable elements, accessible by simple deployment from an online repository, including version and dependency management.
You will find a complete list of bundled plugins on the npm website or navigate them using the npm CLI utility that is automatically built with Node.js. The ecosystem module is available to everyone, and anybody can publish their own version, which will be included in the npm repository.
Some of the most prominent npm modules are:
Express-Express.js—or simply Express — the Sinatra-inspired web development framework for Node.js, and the de-facto base for much of the Node.js applications out there today.
Hapi- a very flexible and easy-to-use configuration-centric framework for developing web and service applications
Connect- is an extensible HTTP server framework for Node.js, including a set of high-performance modules known as middleware; acts as the basis for Express.
Socket.jo and socks- Server-side part is the two most popular web socket components out there today.
Pug (formerly Jade)-One of the most popular HAML-inspired templating engines by default in Express.js.
MongoDB and Mongojs- MongoDB wrappers to provide the MongoDB object database API in Node.js.
Redis-Client library (Redis).
Lodash (underscore, lazy.js)- a JavaScript utility belt. Underscore began the game but was overturned by one of its two competitors, primarily due to better performance and modular implementation.
Forever-Probably the most common utility to ensure that a node script is running continuously. Keep the Node.js cycle up in running in the face of any unforeseen failures.
Moment-A JavaScript date library to parse, validate, manipulate, and format dates.
Where To Use Node.Js:
Chat
Api On Top Of An Object Db
Queued Inputs
Data Streaming
Proxy
Brokerage - Stock Trader’s Dashboard
Application Monitoring Dashboard
System Monitoring Dashboard
Server-side Web Applications
So, as we covered, Node has many benefits over other technologies and many major companies have come to use Node.js in their applications, perhaps for that reason.
Which are these prominent companies that have relied on Node.js to build their apps? We have some examples that are of high profile.
Netflix
Netflix is the world's leading video-on-demand streaming media provider. It's a data-driven network using a huge amount of A / B research to create a rich interface for its 93 million subscribers around the world. Great numbers of specific packages each push cycle produces a conditional dependence and device scalability problem. That is why the company has decided to leverage the fast and lightweight Node.js. A 70 per cent improvement in start-up time was one of the most significant effects of this.
Trello
Trello is a project management app that supports in our everyday work. Trello's server-side was built to Node.js. An event-driven, non-blocking server was a successful option for immediate update propagation, which needed a lot of open connections to sustain. Node.js also became useful when the firm prototyped a single-page application tool. For them, it was a fast way to get started and ensure that all was going in the right direction.
PayPal
PayPal, a multinational online payment system, has changed its backend technology from Java to JavaScript and Node.js. Previously, the company's technical departments were split between those who code for the browser and others who code for the application layer, and that didn't turn out perfectly. Then full-stack engineers came to the rescue, but that layout was not perfect either. Adopting Node.js solved their issues, as it allowed the client and server programs to be written in the same programming language-JavaScript. As a result, the unified team can understand both ends of the problems and react more effectively to customer needs.
LinkedIn, the world's leading business and job-oriented social networking site, also supported Node.js and switched their ios device infrastructure from Ruby on Rails to Node.js last year. Even though it was still a very untimely atmosphere at the time, it proved to be a good step for the company. The new software is 2-10 times faster than its ancestor and is incredibly lightweight too. The production was very rapid on top of that.
Uber
Uber, a platform that links drivers to consumers requiring transportation (and now even food delivery) services, leverages various tools and programming languages in their app's engineering. Uber's tech stack is continually changing and since then they have developed new solutions that have proved to be more effective in certain ways. That said, Node.js is also one of the key cogs in the activity of the business as it helps to scale up in line with the increasingly growing demand for their services.
Medium
Medium is an online publishing platform for their web servers using Node.js. Although the web app may look like a plain HTML page, at first sight, there's even more technology behind it. Medium is a data-driven platform which evolves alongside users and their behaviour. Node.js is especially helpful to get a deeper understanding of product improvements and play with new concepts when it comes to running A / B experiments.
eBay
eBay, a global e-commerce company, was still open to emerging technology. For two primary factors, the team settled on Node.js: they wanted an implementation as real-time as possible to manage live links to the website, and a system that could orchestrate a large range of eBay-specific resources that view page information. Node.js was a great fit.
NASA
Yeah, that's Good. NASA also uses Node.js. The system is much more important than in other applications as it protects lives, keeping astronauts safe on their risky expeditions to space. Following an accident in which one of the astronauts almost died due to ineffective data hosting in many locations, NASA faced the challenge of moving data related to the EVA space suits to one cloud database to reduce access times. The new Node.js based program reduced the number of process phases from 28 to 7.
Yahoo
For quite a long time the Yahoo frontend team used Node.js in production to serve web pages. Single-page applications or content sites using Node.js are many of their new products. They pump about 25,000 requests a second into the Node.js servers, which demonstrates the size and high performance of this Javascript application. Eric Ferraiuolo, Yahoo's principal software developer, reveals that efficiency has improved for every property they transfer to Node.js stack.
Look towards the bright side of future
The above examples are just the tip of the iceberg among all organizations that have adopted Node.js in their output. Node.js is used by many bigger organizations, e.g. Github, Microsoft, Google, Yahoo, Mozilla or. Technology provides countless development opportunities and we look forward to seeing more and more up-and-coming Node.js-based apps invading the market.
So, if you have any plans running in mind, you better consider the best and don’t forget to choose the best developers in demand as well!