As
I am, I think you are also new to this Node.JS, so let’s begin with a
brief introduction of the same. After searching about it from all
sources whatever I found, I would like to share it with you:
It
was developed by Ryan Dahl in back 2009. Node.JS is an open source
server environment, uses JavaScript on the server, it’s free and the
main advantage is it runs on various platforms (Windows,
Linux, Unix, Mac OS X, etc.). Node.js also offers a rich library of
various JavaScript modules which are responsible to simplify the
development of web applications using Node.js to a great extent.
Node.js = Runtime Environment + JavaScript Library
Key Features of Node.js
The following are some of the interesting features that make Node.JS the first choice of software architects:
- Event Driven and Asynchronous −
All the APIs (Application Interface Programming) of Node.js library
uses asynchronous programming, i.e non-blocking. It is an essential
means that a Node.js based server never waits for an API to return data.
The server then moves to the next API after calling it. Moreover, a
notification mechanism of Events of Node.js helps the server to get a
response from the previous API call.
- It’s Very Fast − Node.js library is very fast in code execution as it is built on Google Chrome’s V8 JavaScript Engine.
- Single Threaded but Highly Scalable
−There is the use of a single-threaded model with event looping in
Node.JS. The event mechanism supports the server in order to respond in a
non-blocking way plus makes the server highly scalable in comparison to
traditional servers which therefore create limited threads to handle
requests. It uses a single-threaded program that can provide service to a
much larger number of requests than the traditional servers like Apache
HTTP Server
- No Buffering − Node.js applications, they, never buffer any sort of data. They simply output the data into chunks.
- License − Under the MIT license, Node.js is released.
Now you might have the question, Who uses this Node.JS??? And What it does??
Here
is the answer to the first question, Following is an exhaustive list of
some application and companies which are using Node.js. This list
includes eBay, General Electric, GoDaddy, Microsoft, PayPal, Uber,
Wikipins, Yahoo!, and Yammer to name a few.
Answer to the second question, Node.JS does:
- Open, create, write, read, delete, and close files on the server
- Modify, delete, and add data in your database
- Collect form data
- Generate the dynamic content of the page
- The diagram depicting some important parts of Node.js
Node.js
is a proto-server; we have to set up each and everything with Node.js
to make it work. It responds to different types of requests, and each
request can even initiate other requests to another part of the system.
This is called an event loop, and it’s a part of the runtime codes. If
you are looking for a Node.js development company,
then you will have a lot of choices. Making a web app based on Node.js
is only a matter of contacting the right company and finalizing the
project. Therefore, there are certain other features which we don’t know
about Node.JS, Let’s see here:
JSON is still the topper
If
you are a JavaScript developer then the most important thing for you is
you must know about JSON, which is JavaScript Object Notation, it is a
popular data exchange format. With JSON people can easily construct
API’s, which is the main aim of developing Node.js. Earlier JavaScript
has not used alone, and still it’s the same case, we have to use JSON
along with JavaScript, they both have made each other’s value to another
level. It translates to JSON which is the entire thing currently, and
even though we are working on the Node.js framework, we have to respect
the use of JSON.
Node.JS is all about JavaScript
We
can know that JavaScript is the C-like language for the development of
the website. If you are working on developing different applications for
your web browser, then it is the most important thing you have to
learn. JavaScript helps Node.JS, by handling the event loop mechanism
which is the perk of Node.JS. JavaScript is quite popular now, as it
helps to run across every OS environment with ease.
It has a wide library of codes
Node.js
has a great range of libraries of dependencies which is known as Node
Package Manager. This helps us to easily manage things with the
dependable package management which let the Node ecosystem to grow
well.
Small
developers can use better packages which are made for the projects that
they decided to make public, with this the developers can have much
better functions in their small scale projects. Hence, this will also
implement Node.js much easier than other systems.
Smaller Modules leads to speedy working
This Node.JS is a framework
divided into different small modules, two of which we can broadly
identify as Node.JS application and Node.JS Core. Although we can make
use of these two together as it’s not always necessary to be used
together at the server or the client end, so it makes it light, with
application or core not being included at all places collectively.
Plenty of Instrumentation on Offer
Nowadays
in this competitive world, different tools are available for various
production usage; you can easily recreate these scripts with such tools.
We even have the tools to make an application run as it would on a
client system and server.
As
Node.JS is still a developing language, you will have many more tools
in the coming days. Node.JS is the best instrumented for production
usage.
Sharing is free therefore encouraged
It
is having some great developers who like to keep on sharing their
knowledge; you can easily get their help while you are working on
Node.JS and sharing on the community is easy. If you have some new
package then you can share it with the new developers and even the real
developers, so they can save their time in working on other types of
sources and packages.
‘Batteries are not included’
Node.js Core and Node.js applications are broken into smaller modules that are composed and shared. Each
tool and package can be scoped tightly and crafted to be manageable.
These can then be baked together mostly without too much unnecessary
kneading.
The
carefree and low-barrier nature of creating a module also motivates
experimentation in the community, and hence there’s experimentation and
quite a bit of overlap in the package population. When it is executed
well, every package typically handles one task (e.g. node-optimist.js:
‘light-weight [command-line] option parsing’).
During
winding up I found, Where does this Node.js not work so well? It’s not
totally perfect in places where a single-threaded calculation is going
to be the support, like in some kind of classification or successive
approximation.
In
such instances, it is much more efficient for Node.JS to drop the
request to an independent library that is dedicated to the task, where
it can be distributed across thousands and thousands of processors.
Node.JS
is maturing very quickly and is being deployed in more and more
revenue-critical and mission-critical systems, like in eCommerce Black
Friday infrastructures.
If
you’re building your next generation Web site especially APIs for Web
and mobile integration or if you are creating something new that depends
on underlying services itself, as discussed above Node.JS is a runtime
system so it can work very well for you. Furthermore, it’s simple to get
started with Node.JS, and yet it is deep enough to handle the upcoming
modern Web complexities with new technologies in the market.