Node JS is an open-source, cross-platform runtime environment to run JavaScript code outside a browser. It has more features than the browser version of JavaScript. The Node runtime is designed to build server-side and networking applications using APIs provided by the Node community and JavaScript for server-side code.
Node JS is used in many applications, like CMS’s, Messaging systems (like Facebook and Yahoo messenger). Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox also support it.
Main Features Of Node.Js:
Node JS consists of an event-driven non-blocking I/O model that uses the JavaScript programming language to write client and server-side code.
The libraries in Node JS are pre-installed, and it is used to develop network applications quickly.
Since it’s good at handling multiple connections simultaneously, we can use it for developing scalable web servers like chat servers or any other multi-user application.
Node JS will save us from writing complex web servers like Apache and Lighttpd because these kinds of servers usually keep a connection open until the data is sent and received by the client-side.
Event Loop
The event loop consists of a set of runnables where each runnable represents an operation to be performed. This event loop feature makes sure that no data is lost by multi-threading. Thereby avoiding the bottleneck to perform functions one after another without any delay between them. This makes our work asynchronous.
Event-Driven Architecture
Node JS uses an event-driven architecture that processes requests asynchronously. When you request a file from Apache in PHP scripts, it will save it into RAM and keep waiting until this file gets wholly downloaded. Only then will it get processed.
When a request comes, you can install callback functions that will be called whenever a sure thing happens.
Modularity
Node JS is based on CommonJS modules. A module may contain one or more functions, constants, and variables. When using Node JS, you should create your modules instead of including other people’s.
This helps maintainability because whenever you need to upgrade something in any part of your project, you’ll only need to upgrade it in one place – where it is defined.
Performance
It is one of the fastest programming languages in event-driven asynchronous I/O handling through its non-blocking I/O model. In Node JS, you can also spawn child processes using the ‘child_process’ module to run several programs at once and asynchronously if needed to increase server performance.
But this should be done with great care– if any of these programs crash, the parent process will also be terminated.
Package Management
There are thousands and thousands of different modules that people have already built for Node JS purposes, so you can install them using the ‘npm’ command-line tool, which is available in the npm module itself. This feature helps you get rid of unnecessary dependencies and manage different modules manually.
Testing
Node JS is built on JavaScript (a scripting language ), so no test frameworks or additional code complexity are required. The tests can be written in Jasmine, Mocha, Tape, Quit, etc. New test frameworks are being developed now and then, specifically for Node JS applications.
Versatility
Node JS is not limited to running backend servers on the web. Still, it can also be used for other purposes like writing desktop apps, developing mobile apps using react native or Ionic framework, managing hardware devices Arduino and control systems through Raspberry pi, etc. Also, it can be used for building different tools like web design frameworks, website generators.
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