Introduction to Node.Js

Node.Js is an open source server environment. It is an asynchronous event-driven JavaScript runtime environment and library used for running web applications outside the client’s browser. Node.Js is free and runs on various platforms such as Windows, Linux, ac OS, etc.

Node.Js was developed by Ryan Dahl in the year 2009. Earlier, servers struggle to handles limited possibilities offered by existing web servers to handle high volume connections and codes either blocked the entire process or need for multiple stacks. Dahl created Node.Js that provide developers the power to use JavaScript for server-side scripting.

Node Js is a server-side programming runs on JavaScript V8 engine and execute JavaScript code outside browser. When you write a JavaScript code in your code editor, that code will not perform any task until your code run in a browser. To run your code, you need runtime environment.

Node.Js is one of the most popular and widely used for backend programming. Node.Js is used by large companies such as Amazon, NASA, PayPal, Reddit, Uber, eBay, LinkedIn, Yahoo, Medium and many more. Node.Js is widely popular with startups and global big and small enterprise businesses.

How to Install Node.Js?

Node.Js can be installed in various ways. The official Node.Js package for all the platforms is available to download at https://nodejs.org/en/download

Example of Node.Js:

The most common “Hello World” example of Node.Js is,

const http = require('http');

const hostname = '127.0.0.1';
const port = 3000;

const server = http.createServer((req, res) => {
  res.statusCode = 200;
  res.setHeader('Content-Type', 'text/plain');
  res.end('Hello World\n');
});

server.listen(port, hostname, () => {
  console.log(`Server running at http://${hostname}:${port}/`);
});

To run this snippet, save this code as server.js file and run node server.js in your terminal.

See more examples of Node.Js beyond Hello World at https://github.com/nodejs/examples

How much JavaScript you need to learn to get started with Node Js?

If you are a beginner in JavaScript, then you need to first clear the basic concepts of JavaScript.

After familiar with JavaScript, you need to start basic learning of Node Js and start building basic Node.Js applications.

While building basic server-side applications, you will find out there is lot more than that in Node.Js to explore with various use case and applications.

Here is the Node.Js dev documentation you can read and explore https://nodejs.dev/en/learn/ to learn more about Node.Js.

Features of Node.Js:

Here are some of the most important features of Node.Js are as follows,

Asynchronous and Event Driven: The APIs build in Node.Js are asynchronous. The Node.Js server never waits for API to return data.

Single Threaded: Node.Js uses a single threaded model with event looping. It uses a single threaded program and can provide large number on requests.

Very Fast: Node.Js build n a JavaScript V8 Engine and the Node.Js library and packages are very fast in code execution.

Easy to Learn: Node.Js is easy to learn. As JavaScript is one of the most popular programming languages, to learn Node.js you need to clear all the concepts to learn Node.Js easily.

Highly Scalable: Node.Js makes the server highly scalable that all traditional servers.

No Buffering: The applications builds by Node.Js never buffers any data.

Applications of Node.Js:

Here are some of the popular applications and products where Node.Js is widely use are as follows,

Single Page Applications:

Single Page Applications (SPAs) are very popular in web development in which an entire application can build in single page and can give user comprehensive experience with all functionalities can available in single page. Node.Js has all the packages to build a single page application easily.

Real Time Chats:

Real Time chat is an online chatting communication tool that enables the live interactions of texts, images, videos and audios between senders and receivers. It is widely used in social media platforms. Node.Js provides all the basic functionality for building real time chat applications.

Streaming Applications:

Node.Js is widely used in building a streaming application. The type of applications which allows users to be able to online stream or download audio or video from the server. Node.Js is excellent to develop streaming applications.

Microservices:

The microservices are being widely popular now-a-days as many of the popular platforms can easily suit for microservices. Node.Js is the best solution to develop microservices.