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Build high-performance web apps with Node.js

Use Node.js and JavaScript for powerful full-stack development.

Fast and scalable apps in a powerful runtime environment

Node.js allows the execution of JavaScript on the server-side and is perfect for building fast and scalable web applications. It has gained substantial popularity thanks to a vibrant community that makes sure the technology is up-to-date with the latest development trends and standards.

Get applications into production fast with rapid MVPs

Node.js is a great option for businesses that demand speed in production

Develop apps in record time

Node.js’s event-driven I/O model supports the handling of concurrent requests. As a result, your app is fast even when performing multiple operations at the same time.

Scale easily, enhance performance

The event-based model also enhances the scalability and performance of Node.js applications. Node.js usually scales better than most other common frameworks

Become lightweight and efficient

The non-blocking and event-driven I/O makes web apps lightweight and efficient in the face of data-intensive real-time tasks running across distributed devices.

Free yourself from restrictions

Node.js gives you more freedom to build an app your way. Developers are not restrained by excessive rules and guidelines, so your app will be exactly as you want.

Build fast and asynchronous apps and dynamic websites

Bring the speed and efficiency of event-driven JavaScript to the backend logic on your servers – Node.js is an open-source, cross-platform, JavaScript-based, server-side development environment:

State-of-the-art technology

Node.js has gained substantial popularity. Companies such as Netflix, Walmart, Uber, and even NASA have leveraged Node.js as the backend for their web applications

Unique framework features

An excellent fit for real-time applications such as chat, streaming services, or collaboration tools, it also excels in IoT apps and Single-Page Applications.

Robust server-side applications

Node.js can deliver a robust server-side web application utilizing a wide range of tools – combine JavaScript development and expertise in Node.js development to create apps like 'GitItBack'.

Freedom to create

Node.js developers can build you a dynamic web application and adapt to the latest tools and top technologies to improve scalable solutions.

Technology and services that deliver maximum value to your business

Web development helps solve problems and respond to users' needs by applying multiple technologies. Make your brand stand out with the right solutions tailored to your needs:

Python

A powerful technology used by multi-billion-dollar corporations and startups

Angular

Perfect for fast prototyping and the efficient development of full web-based projects

Node.js

An excellent choice for building scalable and high-performance web and mobile apps.

Front-end solutions

Frameworks and battle-tested techniques that enable you to create a beautiful and user-friendly product.

Take advantage of proven processes and make your project a success

A good Node js development company will be able to take care of even the most complex of processes and will guide you smoothly towards your goal. At Aikyne, our Node.js development processes are based on industry best practices and years of experience, so you can be sure that your company is in good hands.

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Find out what you can do with Node.js

Node.js is suitable for many different projects – here are some areas where it excels in performance:

Internet of Things

The most obvious advantage of Node.js as a backend for such networks is its ability to process multiple concurrent requests and events emitted by thousands or even millions of devices on the network. The avalanche of requests and data coming from IoT devices does not block Node.js servers thanks to their event-driven architecture and asynchronous processing suitable for I/O-heavy operations on the IoT network.

This makes Node.js fast as an application layer between these devices and databases used to store the data originating from them.

IoT developers working in data-intensive scenarios can leverage the low resource requirements of Node.js. Low memory requirements allow for the easy integration of Node.js as software into single-board controllers such as Arduino, widely used for building digital devices that form IoT systems.

Finally, the Node community has been an early adopter of the IoT technology, creating over 80 packages for Arduino controllers and multiple packages for the Pebble and Fitbit wearable devices widely used in IoT systems.

Real-time chat

Real-time chats can take the form of one-to-one or one-to-many group chats built on instant messaging (IM) or Internet Relay Chat (IRC) technologies.

Node.js provides all basic functionalities for building real-time chats of any complexity. In particular, Node has a powerful Event API that facilitates creating certain kinds of objects (“emitters”) that periodically emit named events “listened” for by event handlers. Thanks to this functionality, Node.js makes it easy to implement server-side events and push notifications widely used in instant messaging and other real-time applications.

Node’s event-based architecture also works well with the WebSockets protocol that facilitates a fast two-way exchange of messages between the client and the server via one open connection. By installing WebSockets libraries on the server and the client-side, you can implement real-time messaging that has lower overheads and latency and faster data transfer than most other, more conventional, solutions.

In Node, you have excellent support for WebSockets via such libraries as socket.io, ws, or websocket-node, thanks to which you can easily deploy efficient real-time chats and applications. With socket.io, for example, all you have to do to create a basic live chat is install the socket.io library on the server and the client and create event emitters and broadcasters that will push messages across the WebSockets open connection – this basic functionality can be achieved with just a few lines of code.

Complex single-page applications

Node.js is a great fit for SPAs thanks to its efficient handling of asynchronous calls and heavy I/O workloads characteristic of these applications. Node.js’s event loop allows to “delay” multiple concurrent requests from the client, which ensures smooth transitions between views and seamless data updates. Also, Node.js works well with data-driven SPAs, where the server acts as a backend that provides data to the client whereas the client does all the HTML rendering.

With such framework as Express available via the NPM repository, you can turn Node.js into a REST API streaming data and services from specific routes. Such approach helps reduce the server’s load while ensuring API sharing across different applications and environments. In this scenario, Node.js would only return the index page (index.html) while data would be sent via REST interfaces and controllers implemented server-side.

From the design point of view, such approach will ensure the clear separation of concerns (SoC) between models, controllers, and views with all data-related services implemented server-side.

Finally, Node.js is good for SPAs because it is written in the same language (JavaScript) as many popular JavaScript frameworks (Ember, Meteor, React, Angular) used in building SPAs. Since both Node.js and browsers use JavaScript, there is less context switching between them, and developers can use the same data and language structures and modular approaches both on the server and the client side. This results in faster development and better maintainability of your SPAs.

Real-time collaboration tools

As in the case of the real-time chat, Node’s asynchronous and event-based architecture is a great fit for collaboration apps. In these applications, many events and I/O requests occur concurrently. For example, several users can edit the same paragraph, comment, post messages, and attach media. Changes to one piece of content might be applied only after a cascade of events, where each step depends on the previous one.

Node’s WebSockets and Event API ensure that heavy I/O operations performed by many users do not make the server hang and that all server-side events and data are sent back to the client on time. By emitting push notifications to the client, Node.js also instantly updates the collaboration environment so that all users have a single and coherent representation of the application. This is precisely the reason why the team of project management app Trello uses the Node.js stack.

The engineering team of Trello decided that Node.js would be great to instantly propagate a lot of updates and hold a lot of open connections, thanks to its event-driven and non-blocking architecture. Among other real-time collaboration apps built on Node.js, we should also mention Yammer, a freemium social networking service facilitating private communication in enterprises.

Streaming apps

Node.js is excellent for the development of streaming applications thanks to its native Stream API. In particular, Node.js has an interface of readable and writable streams that can be processed and monitored very efficiently. Stream instances are basically Unix pipes that allow transmitting parts of the app’s executable code to the local machine while keeping a connection open for new components to download on demand.

Streams allow users to pipe requests to each other and stream data directly to its final destination. As a bonus, streams do not require caching and temporary data – just an open connection to stream app data from one place to another.

Microservices architecture

Node.js is an excellent solution for developing microservices and creating easy-to-use APIs to connect them. In particular, the Node.js repository features Express and Koa frameworks, which make it easy to mount several server instances for each microservice and design routing addresses for them. Node.js with Express allows for creating highly flexible modules responsible for specific parts of your app.

In addition, Node.js can be easily integrated with Docker and will thus allow you to encapsulate microservices in hermetic containers to avoid any conflicts between the application development environments used in each of them.

Using Node.js for microservices also benefits from Node’s lightweight requirements. Node.js with microservices significantly reduces app deployment time and enhances efficiency, maintainability, and scalability of your applications.

Microservices architecture also helps manage the division of labor in your engineering teams efficiently, enabling them to work on specific tasks without affecting other parts of your application.

Build your competitive advantage with Node.js

We help clients from all over the world to stand out in a crowded digital market – our team of 600+ specialists includes UI/UX designers, developers, illustrators, QA experts, and business analysts to create custom software development solutions for companies of all sizes – from startups to enterprises.

How can Node.js development help my business?

Check out the answers to some of the most common questions our clients ask about Node.js development:

The way your development company works will depend on the technology (or technologies) you are building your app with.

The first thing to consider is the time scale of your project. In the long run, Node.js offers a relatively low cost of development. Your initial budget will be bigger in comparison to Ruby on Rails, for instance, but with the app’s expansion, scale, new features, and further maintenance, the costs will drop, and the development time will be shorter. That’s why it’s more efficient to build a demo or an MVP and prototype your application with Ruby on Rails. That said, the costs will grow more rapidly with time with RoR.

Secondly, since many popular front-end frameworks are based on JavaScript (e.g., React, Ember, and Angular), it will be much easier to communicate within the team between backend and front-end developers. Both sides of your development team will write in the same language, so they will be able to understand the code with ease, working more efficiently as a result.

Node js is an unopinionated environment, which means that it comes with few guidelines. Developers need to pick and write solutions on their own. Therefore, at the start of a project, their experience and knowledge about different frameworks should be more extensive than in the case of RoR projects, where many things will be predefined from the get-go.

JavaScript is one of the most popular development languages, which makes it easier to find full-stack programmers with Node.js experience. It is also easier for someone who already knows Node.js to learn front-end and vice-versa. Quite often, you can find developers that can both write the server- and client-side of the application. You are likely to have a smaller development team that will be easier to manage.

Finally, you should consider that with the growing popularity of Node.js, there is a rising demand for skilled and experienced developers, which will make finding members of your team more difficult. This is a more significant factor if you are planning to scale your application in the near future.

If you want to hire more developers for your team, specify your recruitment needs, and plan it in advance to avoid a lack of coders hampering your work. Alternatively, you can avoid recruitment issues altogether by using the services of an experienced development company.

An e-commerce platform is a complex system from a technical perspective
Node.js is a JavaScript environment that lets you develop performant and scalable web and mobile applications. It’s a perfect match for applications such as real-time collaboration tools, chat, streaming apps, or other applications that deal with multiple I/O operations. However, it doesn’t cope well with CPU-heavy software as the long-running calculations block incoming requests, which can lead to a drop in performance.
Performance

Node.js supports multitasking by giving better outcomes with lower costs. Comparing it to PHP, for example, it’s way more convenient. As the buyer's journey for an e-commerce store involves numerous operations, such as adding things to the basket, changing product features, choosing payments, etc., it’s crucial from the performance viewpoint that the technology serves such tasks efficiently. And Node.js effectively handles different operations conducted at the same time, which makes it a good choice for e-commerce.

Scalability

Node.js enables quick scalability. In a short period, your e-commerce store can grow substantially. This is an important factor to consider when choosing the right technology. Node has an inbuilt mechanism that helps to manage scalability and adjust it to the individual needs of your company

Big and active community

The Node.js community is a very active and vibrant group of developers who contribute to the constant improvement of Node.js. Thanks to their dedicated services, the framework is well-documented, up-to-date, and continuously supported, which makes Node.js development much easier and faster. They produce a ton of ready solutions, code in Github, plugins, modules, and many more possibilities. In addition, if a problem pops up in development, chances are the answer already exists on StackOverflow.

Many plugins and packages in npm

Node.js comes with many packages that can be easily implemented in your web or mobile app. That way, developers don’t need to write everything from scratch but can leverage reliable open-source solutions. This advantage significantly increases the speed of Node.js development. There are great packages available for e-commerce too.

One language on the backend and front-end

Node.js is a JavaScript-based environment, and many popular front-end frameworks (such as React, Ember, and Angular) use the very same language. Therefore, you can create web and mobile apps that are isomorphic and written in one language. This streamlines the development process, eases communication between frontend and backend teams, and enables teams to understand both sides of the codebase much better. Potentially, you could have a smaller and more efficient development team that is easier to manage.

Finally, with no technological diversity, recruiting new people in case of scaling up won’t be a problem.

Node.js is a runtime environment that allows the execution of JavaScript on the server side

It offers many benefits for building web and mobile apps, such as real-time collaboration tools, streaming apps, chat, or Internet-of-Things apps. Node.js requires a slightly different approach and poses different challenges when it comes to maintenance.

Learning where you can find the biggest problems and knowing the right solutions is crucial to the success of your app.

1. Extensive stack

Node.js doesn’t provide any specific convention for developing a web or mobile app. Frameworks that use Node.js are mostly unopinionated, meaning that they don’t give you any specific guidelines for the way code should be written.

That’s why every web and mobile application requires an individual approach and, as a result, more experienced programmers who have worked out robust processes for developing and maintaining code internally.

2. Technical debt

Many problems with Node.js stem from a lack of good practices. The open-source community is very active and offers plenty of ways to build superb web and mobile applications. Having too many options, however, could be a problem for inexperienced developers and could lead to app structure incongruency.

The ecosystem is still relatively immature. Implementing well-tested design patterns borrowed from other more traditional environments, like Java, is crucial for Storefries code maintenance.

3. Scalability challenges

Node.js is a single-threaded process, which makes scaling a little bit more complicated. Developing more complex applications with CPU/MEM-heavy computations might require dividing them into smaller microservices that handle different operations.

When architecting a performant and scalable Node.js web application, keep in mind it should be relatively small and stateless. Recent years have brought development in the area in the form of different architectural approaches such as the aforementioned microservices or serverless, as well as Node.js threading support (still in the experimental stage, but they should be a regular feature in Node v12).

4. Poor documentation

Documentation is crucial to every IT development project – it gives you an idea of how the app works. It tells developers what the main components are, how they relate to each other, and what the main purpose of the application is.

It provides explanations as to why certain solutions, especially the less obvious ones, were applied. Poor documentation will very likely extend development time and make the whole process more difficult. It can expose the app to problems with performance and inhibit the implementation of new features.

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