Basically, there are three fundamental things behind the choice of a technology stack for your software product.
- Your project priorities and objectives.
- The specifics of your project’s domain and market.
- The specifics of the stack itself.
All of these must be properly considered without contradicting each other.
The server side—the back end of your product—is arguably its most important part. Among all possible back end development technologies to choose from, Node.js is one of the essentials. It encompasses the vast majority of modern business domains and actual cases.
What types of software projects is Node.js suitable for?
Considering the specifics of this technology and its accompanying stack, we outlined types of software projects where Node.js often becomes the optimal solution.
THE INTERNET OF THINGS
Node.js is the best candidate for supporting a huge number of connections and small messages from IoT devices.
REAL TIME COMMUNICATION & COLLABORATION TOOLS | WEBSOCKETS | WEBRTC
The reason why Node.js should be used for WebRTC-based and other real-time communication software is the same: a huge number of simultaneous connections and distribution of messages across channels. Other technologies struggle hard to match the efficiency and the ratio between functional complexity, scalability, and speed of development, which can be easily achieved with Node.js.
AUDIO/VIDEO PROCESSING VIA EXTERNAL TOOLS
The asynchronous input-output of Node.js makes it a perfect tool to upload this kind of content to the server, which in turn will process it. Implementation of streaming software is also possible; the actual possibility depends on the selected streaming implementation, types of data and processing.
INTEGRATION WITH C++ CODE
Since Node.js is basically a C++ server engine that executes JavaScript code, integration with any C++ code (e.g. libraries) is elementary. Additionally, Node.js has the fastest bridging – transmission of data between C++ and application code.
SERVERLESS ARCHITECTURE | BAAS | PAAS
This is a popular solution that saves huge amounts of money and effort on fluctuating server load and DevOps.
MICROSERVICE-BASED ARCHITECTURE
If the software is divided into functional modules in containers, optimal technologies can be selected for each. With Node.js it becomes easier and cheaper to parallelize development, test separate modules, and conduct ongoing support.
LIST OF CASES FROM THE OFFICIAL NODE.JS REPOSITORY
- Back-end API services
- Service-oriented architectures
- Micro service-based applications
- Generating/serving dynamic web page content
- SPA applications with bidirectional communication over Web Sockets and/or HTTP/2
- Agents and Data Collectors
- Web Developer Tooling
- Small scripts
All of these cases can be implemented with other technologies; however, for Node.js it’s the official focus of the platform, which is continuously developed and optimized by the community.
To sum it all up, Node.js development services can be involved for any business sphere with a couple of exceptions mentioned above. Over the last 3 years it rapidly advanced from a specific solution for runtime communications to a full-fledged back end technology with a number of powerful high-level frameworks (e.g. Express, Koa, Next or Nuxt). This evolution made it even more attractive for businesses and any Node.js development company there is; software developers speak highly of it.
