Node.js Introduction

What is Node.js?

Node.js is an open-source and cross-platform runtime environment for executing JavaScript code outside a browser. NodeJS is not a framework and it’s not a programming language. Node.js is used to build back-end services like APIs like Web App or Mobile App. It’s used in production by large companies such as Paypal, Uber, Netflix, Walmart, and so on.

Node.js = Runtime Environment + JavaScript Library

Concepts of Node.js

The following diagram depicts some important parts of Node.js that are useful and help us understand it better.

How does Node.js work?

Node.js accepts the request from the clients and sends the response, while working with the request node.js handles them with a single thread. To operate I/O operations or requests node.js use the concept of threads. Thread is a sequence of instructions that the server needs to perform. It runs parallel on the server to provide the information to multiple clients. Node.js is an event loop single-threaded language. It can handle concurrent requests with a single thread without blocking it for one request.

Advantages of NodeJS:

1. Easy Scalability: Easily scalable the application in both horizontal and vertical directions.
2. Real-time web apps: Node.js is much more preferable because of faster synchronization. Also, the event loop avoids HTTP overloaded for Node.js development.
3. Fast Suite: NodeJS acts like a fast suite and all the operations can be done quickly like reading or writing in the database, network connection, or file system
4. Easy to learn and code: NodeJS is easy to learn and code because it uses JavaScript.
5. Advantage of Caching: It provides the caching of a single module. Whenever there is any request for the first module, it gets cached in the application memory, so you don’t need to re-execute the code.
6. Data Streaming: In NodeJS HTTP request and response are considered as two separate events.
7. Hosting: PaaS (Platform as a Service) and Heroku are the hosting platforms for NodeJS application deployment which is easy to use without facing any issue.
8. Corporate Support: Most of the well-known companies like Walmart, Paypal, Microsoft, Yahoo are using NodeJS for building the applications.

Reason to Choose Node.js

There are other programming languages also which we can use to build back-end services so what makes Node.js different I am going to explain.

1. It’s easy to get started and can be used for prototyping and agile development
2. It provides fast and highly scalable services.
3. It uses JavaScript everywhere, so it’s easy for a JavaScript programmer to build back-end services using Node.js
4. Large ecosystem for open source library and has asynchronous or non-blocking nature.

Application of NodeJS: NodeJS should be preferred to build Real-Time Chats, Complex Single-Page applications, Real-time collaboration tools, Streaming apps, JSON APIs based application.

There are some frameworks of the node which you can use to build your applications. Some popular frameworks of node are…Express.js, Socket.io, Koa.js, Meteor.js, Sail.js.