The modern web application has really come a long way over the years with the introduction of many popular frameworks such as bootstrap, Angular JS, etc. All of these frameworks are based on the popular JavaScript framework.
But when it came to developing server-based applications there was just kind of a void, and this is where Node.js came into the picture.
What is node.js?
Node.js is also based on the JavaScript framework, but it is used for developing server-based applications. While going through the entire tutorial, we will look into Node.js in detail and how we can use it to develop server-based applications.
Node.js is single-threaded, that employs a concurrency model based on an event loop. It doesn’t block the execution instead registers a callback which allows the application to continue. It means Node.js can handle concurrent operations without creating multiple threads of execution so can scale pretty well.
It uses JavaScript along with C/C++ for things like interacting with the filesystem, starting up HTTP or TCP servers and so on. Due to it’s extensively fast growing community and NPM, Node.js has become a very popular, open source and cross-platform app. It allows developing very fast and scalable network app that can run on Microsoft Windows, Linux, or OS X.
Following are the areas where it’s perfect to use Node.js.
- I/O bound Applications
- Data Streaming Applications
- Data Intensive Real-time Applications (DIRT)
- JSON APIs based Applications
- Single Page Applications
At the same time, it’s not suitable for heavy applications involving more of CPU usage.
What Are The Key Features Of Node.Js?
Let’s look at some of the key features of Node.js.
Asynchronous event-driven
1. IO helps concurrent request handlingAll APIs of Node.js are asynchronous. This feature means that if a Node receives a request for some Input/Output operation, it will execute that operation in the background and continue with the processing of other requests. Thus it will not wait for the response from the previous requests.
2. Fast in Code execution
Node.js uses the V8 JavaScript Runtime engine, the one which is used by Google Chrome. Node has a wrapper over the JavaScript engine which makes the runtime engine much faster and hence processing of requests within Node.js also become faster.
3. Single Threaded but Highly Scalable
Node.js uses a single thread model for event looping. The response from these events may or may not reach the server immediately. However, this does not block other operations. Thus making Node.js highly scalable. Traditional servers create limited threads to handle requests while Node.js creates a single thread that provides service to much larger numbers of such requests.
4. Node.js library uses JavaScript
This is another important aspect of Node.js from the developer’s point of view. The majority of developers are already well-versed in JavaScript. Hence, development in Node.js becomes easier for a developer who knows JavaScript.
5. There is an Active and vibrant community for the Node.js framework
The active community always keeps the framework updated with the latest trends in the web development.
6. No Buffering
Node.js applications never buffer any data. They simply output the data in chunks.
How Does Node.Js Work?
A Node.js application creates a single thread on its invocation. Whenever Node.js receives a request, it first completes its processing before moving on to the next request. Node.js works asynchronously by using the event loop and callback functions, to handle multiple requests coming in parallel.
An Event Loop is a functionality which handles and processes all your external events and just converts them to a callback function.
It invokes all the event handlers at a proper time.
Thus, lots of work is done on the back-end, while processing a single request, so that the new incoming request doesn’t have to wait if the processing is not complete.
While processing a request, Node.js attaches a callback function to it and moves it to the back-end. Now, whenever its response is ready, an event is called which triggers the associated callback function to send this response.
Let’s Take An Example Of A Grocery Delivery.
Usually, the delivery boy goes to each and every house to deliver the packet. Node.js works in the same way and processes one request at a time. The problem arises when any one house is not open. The delivery boy can’t stop at one house and wait till it gets opened up. What he will do next, is to call the owner and ask him to call when the house is open. Meanwhile, he is going to other places for delivery. Node.js works in the same way. It doesn’t wait for the processing of the request to complete (house is open). Instead, it attaches a callback function (call from the owner of the house) to it. Whenever the processing of a request completes (the house is open), an event gets called, which triggers the associated callback function to send the response.
To summarize, Node.js does not process the requests in parallel. Instead, all the back-end processes like, I/O operations, heavy computation tasks, that take a lot of time to execute, run in parallel with other requests.
When to Use Node.js
Node.js is best for usage in streaming or event-based real-time applications likeChat applications
Game servers
Fast and high-performance servers that need to processes thousands of requests at a time, then this is an ideal framework.
Good for the collaborative environment
This is good for environments which manage document. In document management environment you will have multiple people who post their documents and do constant changes by checking out and checking in documents. So Node.js is good for these environments because the event loop in Node.js can be triggered whenever documents are changed in a document managed environment.
Advertisement servers
Again here you could have thousands of request to pull advertisements from the central server and Node.js can be an ideal framework to handle this.
Streaming servers
Another ideal scenario to use Node is for multimedia streaming servers wherein clients have request's to pull different multimedia contents from this server.
Node.js is good when you need high levels of concurrency but less amount of dedicated CPU time.
Best of all, since Node.js is built on javascript, it's best suited when you build client-side applications which are based on the same javascript framework.
When to not use Node.js
Node.js can be used for a lot of applications with various purpose, the only scenario where it should not be used is if there are long processing times which is required by the application.Node is structured to be single threaded. If an application is required to carry out some long-running calculations in the background. So if the server is doing some calculation, it won't be able to process any other requests. As discussed above, Node.js is best when processing needs less dedicated CPU time.
