Are you a backend web developer or someone looking for a solution to build your web application’s backend? Then Read on…
In this article, we are going to checkout out the Top 10 Node.js Frameworks used for Server-Side Backend Web Development based on the current available Public Data. When it comes to Server-Side Development for building API Server’s or Microservices. Node.js is a popular choice for JavaScript Developers. In this article we are going to check why Node.js is so popular with the statistics, also discuss about its Advantages and Limitations.
But let’s first understand what is Node.js and when is it used. If you are Beginner and want to understand about Node.js –
What is Node.js ?
Node.js is a JavaScript runtime environment built on Google Chrome’s JavaScript Engine (V8 Engine), a platform for building server-side event-driven I/O Applications written in C, C++ and JS. Node.js uses an event-driven, non-blocking I/O model that makes it lightweight and efficient, perfect for building data-intensive real-time applications that can run across distributed devices. Node.js also has a rich community and modules available for extensibility. It is a backend framework which is used for building back-end services like Building REST API’s and Microservices. It mainly is used in 3 ways: MVC – (Model, View, Controller). Now adays you can hook up Node.js with any Database available out their eq. MongoDB, MySQL. It also supports Typescript and GraphQL.
Both your browser JavaScript and Node.js run on the V8 JavaScript runtime engine. This engine takes your JavaScript code and converts it into a faster machine code. Machine code is low-level code which the computer can run without needing to first interpret it.
Nodejs is backed by OpenJS Foundation and the latest versions (currently) are 14.15.0 LTS (Fermium) and 15.2.0 with latest features to experiment on. You can checkout the official site at https://nodejs.org and their GitHub Development Repo (For Issues and Contributions) at https://github.com/nodejs. Also there is great library of open source Node Packages or Modules at https://npmjs.com
Features of Node.js:
Great Developer Community
Node.js is backed with a very active and Global community of Developers to support and maintain. Many companies are active sponsors and host events worldwide for the community. To encourage its adoption, Open Source Contributions are always encouraged.
Asynchronous and Event Driven
API’s asynchronous (non-blocking) nature makes Nodejs a better choice for rapid API development. The server can get response parallelly from several API’s together, without blocking and uses a notification mechanism of Events of Node.js to get response from the previous API Calls.
Single Threaded but Highly Scalable
Node.js uses a single-threaded execution model with event-looping. The Event mechanism helps the server to respond in a non-blocking way and makes the server highly scalable. It can handle much larger number of requests compared to servers like Apache HTTP server. It can be scaled horizontally or vertically using clusters or pm2.
Open Source License
Node.js is MIT License, that means you are free to use or modify it according to your requirements.
Platform Support:
It supports all known platforms like Windows, macOS, Linux, SmartOS, IBM AIX etc.
Other Features:
Nodejs supports Web Assembly and WASI (WebAssembly System Interface), Unified API for Databases that supports JSON data such as Postgres, MongoDB or CouchDB and JSON)
Nodejs supports various development patterns like MVC, MVP, MVVM. It can reuse the same model and service interface between Client Side and Server Side.
USE CASES:
- For building Real Time Dynamic Web Applications (Backend) Like Blogs, Social Networks, Ecommerce Web Applications etc.
- For building Real Time Games
- For building REST API’s
- For building Microservices
Video on Nodejs Foundation – https://youtu.be/ck4s4tSyB3Q
Top 10 Node.js Frameworks being used for Web Development
EXPRESS.JS
Express is a Fast, Lightweight framework which is the first choice of Nodejs developers, with a great community and easy learning curve. With its MVC architectural pattern with 14+ template engines support, its robust, scalable and fully customizable.
It is well suited for all types of web and mobile app developments right from small to enterprise level. It can be used for Rapid API generation and craft data intensive web applications easily. Supports Typescript and various ODM and ORM Databases including GraphQL.
GitHub Repo – https://github.com/expressjs/express
GitHub Stars – 50.8K
Official Website – http://expressjs.com/
Nest.JS
Nest.JS is a perfect framework to develop enterprise-grade application. It provides a out-of-the-box MVC modular architecture for developing reliable and highly scalable server-side applications which are easy to maintain.
It is built with Typescript and supports strong typing and combines elements of OOP (Object Oriented Programming), FP (Functional Programming) and FRP(Functional Reactive Programming). It supports Typescript and GraphQL support out-of-the-box.
GitHub Repo – https://github.com/nestjs/nest
GitHub Stars – 31.7K
Official Website – https://nestjs.com
KOA.JS
Koa is a next-generation web framework created by the same team that created Express.js. It is highly customizable, modular approach and enables to design and develop a server-side application with the greater efficiency to handle errors. It provides ES6 generators allows developers to avoid callbacks.
GitHub Repo – https://github.com/koajs/koa
GitHub Stars – 30.2K
Official Website – https://koajs.com
METEOR.JS
Meteor is a full-stack Node.js framework for building real-time Web and Mobile applications. It uses a single API for both front-end and back-end development. It is easy to integrate with other Frontend frameworks like Angular, React, Vue and more.
It has a great community of developers, tutorials, custom packages, and documentation support. It also supports Progressive web applications and also has an awesome package manager called AtmosphereJS.
GitHub Repo – https://github.com/meteor/meteor
GitHub Stars – 42.1K
Official Website – https://www.meteor.com/
SOCKET.IO
Socket is a Node.js framework that is used to build real-time Web Applications that allows the bidirectional data flow between the web client and server. Its some of the features include Asynchronous data I/O, binary streaming, instant messaging.
Github Repo – https://github.com/socketio/socket.io/
Github Stars – 51.5K
Official Website – https://socket.io/
SAIL.JS
Sails.js is a real-time MVC framework for Node.js. It follows the “convention over configuration” principle. It is inspired by the popular Ruby-on-Rails web framework and allows you to quickly build REST APIs, single-page apps and real-time (WebSocket-based) apps. It makes extensive use of code-generators that allows you to build your applications by writing less code.
It is built on top of Express and Socket.io to take their advantages and also provides a Waterline ORM (object relational mapper) for SQL-based databases /ODM (object document mapper) for NoSQL document-based databases.
GitHub Repo – https://github.com/balderdashy/sails
GitHub Stars – 21.6K
Official Website – https://sailsjs.com
TOTAL.JS
Total.js is a modern and modular NodeJS supporting the MVC architecture. Angular.js, Polymer, Backbone.js, Bootstrap and other client–side frameworks are fully compatible with this framework. This framework is totally extensible and asynchronous. The fact that it does not require any tools such as Grunt to compress makes it easy to use. It also has NoSQL embedded in it and supports array and other prototypes.
Also, it provides cools apps/starters for use cases such as Websites, Ecommerce, REST services, Real-time communication, Games, Web applications, Desktop Applications, Internet of Things
Github Repo – https://github.com/totaljs/framework
Github Stars – 4.1k
Official Website – https://www.totaljs.com/
HAPI.JS
Hapi is a powerful and robust framework that is used for developing APIs. The well-developed plugin system and various key features such as input validation, configuration-based functionality, implement caching, error handling, logging, etc. make the Hapi one of the most preferred frameworks. It is used for building useful applications and providing technology solutions by several large-scale websites such as PayPal, Disney.
GitHub Repo – https://github.com/hapijs/hapi
GitHub Stars – 12.8K
Official Website – https://hapi.dev
LOOPBACK.JS
LoopBack is a Node.js framework with an easy-to-use CLI and a dynamic API explorer. It allows you to create your models based on your schema or dynamic models in the absence of a schema. It is compatible with a good number of REST services and a wide variety of databases, including MySQL, Oracle, MongoDB, Postgres, and more.
It can allow a user to build a server API that maps to another server, almost like creating an API that is a proxy for another API. It’s support for native mobile and browser SDKs for clients like Android/Java, iOS, Browser JavaScript (Angular).
Features:
Unbelievably extensible
Graph QL Support
GitHub Repo – https://github.com/strongloop/loopback-next
GitHub Stars – 3.2K
Official Website – https://loopback.io
Other frameworks include Derby.js , Keystone.js, Feather.js , Adonis which are also great to checkout.
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