What is Node.js?
The JavaScript Engine (V8 Engine) in Google Chrome serves as the foundation for the server-side runtime environment known as Node.js. Ryan Dahl created Node.js in 2009, and the most recent version is 20.9.0. Node.js is an open-source, back-end JavaScript runtime environment that runs JavaScript code outside of a web browser and is compatible with Windows, Linux, Unix, macOS, and other platforms.
According to its official documentation, Node.js is defined as follows:
The JavaScript runtime in Chrome serves as the foundation for the Node.js platform, which makes it simple to create scalable and quick network applications. Node.js is lightweight and efficient due to its event-driven, non-blocking I/O approach, which makes it ideal for distributed devices running data-intensive real-time applications.
The event-driven, non-blocking I/O of the Node.js environment maximizes web application scalability and throughput. The Node.js distributed development is now managed by the OpenJS Foundation, with support from the Linux Foundation’s Collaborative Projects initiative.
Features of Node.js
Following are some of the important features that make Node.js the first choice of software architects.
- All of the Node.js library’s APIs are asynchronous, or non-blocking, and event-driven. In essence, it means that a server built with Node.js never waits for data to be returned from an API. After accessing an API, the server advances to the next one, and a Node.js event notification system assists the server in receiving a response from the previous API request.
- Extremely Quick − The Node.js library, which is based on Google Chrome’s V8 JavaScript Engine, executes code extremely quickly.
- Single Threaded yet Highly Scalable: Node.js employs an event looping single threaded approach. Unlike typical servers that use a limited number of threads to process requests, event mechanisms enable the server to reply in a non-blocking manner and provide significant scalability. Compared to more conventional servers like Apache HTTP Server, Node.js uses a single threaded program that can handle a far greater volume of requests.
- No Buffering: Applications built with Node.js never buffer any data. The data is simply output in chunks by these apps.
The following diagram depicts some important parts of Node.js which we will discuss in detail in the subsequent chapters.
Where to Use Node.js?
Node.js is proving to be an ideal technology partner in the following domains.
- Applications that are I/O-bound
- Applications for Data Streaming
- Real-time Data-Intensive Applications (DIRT)
- Applications based on JSON APIs
- Applications on a Single Page
- Nevertheless, Node.js is not recommended for CPU-intensive applications.
The main purpose of Node.js is to create network applications such as Web servers. However, you can build different types of applications such as command line applications, web applications, real-time chat applications, REST APIs etc.
The vast majority of the thousands of open-source Node.js libraries available are hosted on the npm website, which is a JavaScript package manager. Several web frameworks can be used to speed up the development of applications. Well-known frameworks include Meteor, Sails.js, Koa.js, Feathers.js, Express.js, and many more.
Many IDEs, including as Atom, JetBrains WebStorm, NetBeans, and Visual Studio Code, allow the creation of Node.js applications. Cloud-hosting services like Google Cloud Platform and AWS Elastic Beanstalk can host Node.js applications.
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