An overview of Node.js

Node.js is one of the most trending technologies that many businesses utilize to stay ahead of the competition or promote their services.

What’s Node.js?

Node.js is a dynamically typed (built on JavaScript) runtime environment that helps to cover a whole web app development project under a single programming language.
It can run on multiple platforms like Linux, Windows & Mac.

What are the advantages of Node.js?

1. Cross-Platform Support

It enables cross-platform application development. It also allows you to run a single code on multiple platforms with minor alterations as needed.

2. Scalability

It has a single-threaded model with an event loop. This will help servers in responding in a non-blocking manner & encourage scalability. The single-threaded program can cater to multiple requests at the same time, which makes it highly scalable.

3. Event Driven & Asynchronous

Node.js library has asynchronous, non-blocking APIs, which means that the server can move to the following API after calling one API. The response from the previous API call is received through the notification mechanism of events.

4. Better efficiency

Node.js uses Chrome’s V8 engine to interpret the code. It has single-module caching & event-driven architecture, contributing to concurrent requests without affecting the RAM.

How did Node.js turn from the underground to the entrepreneur’s first & foremost choice?

Let’s get back to its beginning.

Node.js was written initially by Ryan Dahl in 2009.

The limited possibilities of the most popular web server, the Apache HTTP Server were criticized by Dahl as it had to handle a lot of connections concurrently.

The problem or the constraints of that period had motivated Ryan to build a faster, easier, and literally superior solution that could be used by other programmers

Node.js is a set of runtimes libraries written in JavaScript. Node.js applications use “single-threaded event loop model” architecture to support a lot of concurrent requests. Node.js is executed by “V8” which was specially developed for Google Chrome.

Today Node.js has become the primary choice of top-notch industry leaders.

What are some of its achievements?

1. As per the Tech Overflow survey, NodeJS secured first place in 2017 & 2018 to be the most regularly & commonly used language in the Tools, Frameworks, and Library categories.

2. W3Techs reports that around 1.5% of every well-known website uses Node.js.

Tips to improve & scale Node.js performance

1. Monitor your application

It is important to monitor the existing Node application to determine its performance. Once you gain an idea of the performance, you can easily optimize your web application to get maximum performance.

Here’re some points you can consider to make your web applications highly scalable.

1. Load Testing

2. Scalability Testing

3. Endurance Test

2. Reduce Latency via Caching

Caching can be used to improve the performance of NodeJS and it can be done for both client-side and server-side web applications.

Server-side caching is the most preferred option for optimization of Node Js performance as it has JavaScript, CSS sheets, HTML pages, etc.

The key benefit of caching in web applications is to get faster data retrievals.

3. Optimize Frontend

It is important to keep your front end short & simple whenever data is transferred. The data includes images and CSS files & you must use bundlers to transform complex data into smaller ones.

When you use bundlers to compress the data, always keep the original code intact.

4. Use HTTP/2

Using the HTTP/2 in the Node Js application will give extra web browsing speed & reduce bandwidth usage.

What are some of the popular Node.js frameworks?

1. Express.js

It is a unique framework that helps developers develop mobile and desktop applications at a quicker and faster pace.

2. Hapi Framework

Hapi is a stable, reliable, and one of the most popular Node.js frameworks; which you can utilize for building REST APIs.

3. Socket Framework

Socket.js, one of the top Nodejs frameworks, is used to generate real-time computing applications.

4. Sails.js Framework

This Node JS framework is a real-time MVC web development created and built on express.

5. Feather.js Framework

Feather.js is one of the Node js REST API Frameworks. As the name suggests, this framework is extremely light as a feather. It can smoothly interact, connect with the backend technology, and extend its assistance to different databases.

The list does not end here.

While hiring a Node.js developer, make sure they have

1. Ample Experience
2. Understanding of Node.js frameworks
3. Efficiency in handling timelines
4. Testing and Error Handling Abilities

Wrapping up

Various organizations, big or small have used Node Js in their web application development which proves that it’s a preferred technology for web application development.

If you are looking for Node.js developers, feel free to contact Webdura.

We can help you out.