JavaScript’s rising popularity has brought drastic changes and I think this is one of the reason why the face of web development today is dramatically different. The things that we can do on the web nowadays with JavaScript running on the server, as well as in the browser, were hard to imagine just several years ago. So, before digging into Node.js, I want you to read up the benefits of JavaScript across the stack, which unifies the language and data format (JSON), which optimally allows to reuse developer resources.
As Wikipedia states: “Node.js is a packaged compilation of Google’s V8 JavaScript engine, the libuv platform abstraction layer, and a core library, which is itself primarily written in JavaScript.” Beyond that, it’s worth noting that Ryan Dahl, the creator of Node.js, was aiming to create real-time websites with push capability, “inspired by applications like Gmail”. In Node.js, he gave developers a tool for working in the non-blocking, event-driven I/O paradigm.
And now nits been 20 years of stateless-web based on the stateless request-response paradigm, we finally have web applications with real-time, two-way connections.
In one sentence: Node.js shines in real-time web applications employing push technology over WebSockets.
You might ask so what is revolutionary about that?
So finally, we have web applications with real-time, two-way connections, where both the client and server can initiate communication, as it allows them to exchange the data freely. This is in stark contrast to the typical web response paradigm, where the client always initiates communication. Additionally, it’s all based on the open web stack (HTML, CSS, and JS) running over the standard port 80.
NPM: The Node Package Manager
When discussing Node.js, one thing that definitely should not be omitted is built-in support for package management using the NPM (Node Package Manager)tool that comes by default with every Node.js installation. The idea of NPM packages is quite similar to that of Ruby Gems: a set of publicly available, reusable components, available through easy installation via an online repository, with version and dependency management.
Let me introduce with some of the most popular Node Package Manager (NPM ) modules are:
- Express – Express.js, a Sinatra-inspired web development framework for Node.js, and the de-facto standard for the majority of Node.js applications out there today.
- Connect – Connect is an extensible HTTP server framework for Node.js, providing a collection of high performance “plugins” known as middleware; serves as a base foundation for Express.
- Socket.io and sockjs – Server-side component of the two most common websockets components out there today.
- Jade – One of the popular templating engines, inspired by HAML, a default in Express.js.
- Mongo and Mongojs – MongoDB wrappers to provide the API for MongoDB object databases in Node.js.
- Redis – Redis client library.
- Coffee-script – CoffeeScript compiler that allows developers to write their Node.js programs using Coffee.
- Underscore (lodash, lazy) – The most popular utility library in JavaScript, packaged to be used with Node.js, as well as its two counterparts, which promise better performance by taking a slightly different implementation approach.
- Forever – Probably the most common utility for ensuring that a given node script runs continuously. Keeps your Node.js process up in production in the face of any unexpected failures.
The list goes on. There are tons of really useful packages out there, available to all (no offense to those that I’ve omitted here).
What Makes Node.Js Totally Awesome
- With node.js, you can create a remote control web app that will be paired with another web app, which needs to be controlled from a distance in real time, making it easy for you to control anything that you choose with a remote.
- Node.js, together with Socket.io can be used in order to help you run a presentation on your laptop using your smartphone as a remote control.
- If you have always wanted to have your own hangout, this is very possible with Node.js.
- Using Node web kit, you can build a chat application that will run on Windows, mac, and Linux very comfortably.
- Node.js can give you an awesome drawing tool that can be used by numerous people at the same time.
- Video games are a favorite pass time for a lot of people. With Node.js, you can create your own game apps and always run them in real-time on web browsers.
- Node.js makes it possible for you to create a myriad of apps that can run on your desktop at the same time, even though they are from different platforms.
- There is so much that you can do with Node.js that you literally have the entire creative world at your feet. You can choose from hundreds of packages, mad science, command line apps, functional programming, htttp; logging, command-line utilities, build tools, templating, web frameworks, documentation, file systems, control flow and real time.
Epilogue
The sky is the limit when it comes to creating online tools and apps using Node package manager (NPM) packages Making use of Node.js you are able to connect to a range of devices, as it allows you to use it on your mobile device or personal computer. So now you know why is this crucial to hire Node.js Developer who can not only understand the core needs of your project but also can offer their profound expertise to make your project stand out from the competition.
You can even talk to our senior Node.js developer to know about further possibilities and benefits you can get by applying it in your next web/mobile application idea.
