Node.js Introduction

Node.js is a server-side platform built on Google Chrome's JavaScript Engine (V8 Engine). Node.js was developed by Ryan Dahl in 2009 and its latest version is 11.9.0. The definition of Node.js as supplied by its official documentation is as follows −

Node.js tutorials will help you learn the essentials of Node.js starting from the basics to an advanced level. These tutorials are broken down into sections, where each section contains a number of related topics that are packed with easy to understand explanations, real-world examples, useful tips, informative notes, and "points to remember" section.

Node.js is an open source, cross-platform runtime environment for

 developing server-side and networking applications. Node.js applications 

are written in JavaScript, and can be run within the Node.js runtime on OS X, 

Microsoft Windows, and Linux.

Advantages of Node.js

Following are some of the important features that make Node.js the first choice of 

software architects.

Asynchronous and Event Driven − All APIs of Node.js library are asynchronous, 

that is, non-blocking. It essentially means a Node.js based server never waits for 

an API to return data. The server moves to the next API after calling it and a notification mechanism of Events of Node.js helps the server to get a response from the previous API call.

Very Fast − Being built on Google Chrome's V8 JavaScript Engine, 

Node.js library is very fast in code execution

Single Threaded but Highly Scalable − Node.js uses a single threaded model

 with event looping. Event mechanism helps the server to respond in a non-blocking way and makes the server highly scalable as opposed to traditional servers which create limited threads to handle requests. Node.js uses a single threaded program and the same program can provide service to a much larger number of requests than traditional servers like Apache HTTP Server.

No Buffering − Node.js applications never buffer any data. These applications simply output the data in chunks.

License − Node.js is released under the MIT license.

Who Uses Node.js?

Following is the link on github wiki containing an exhaustive list of projects, application and
companies which are using Node.js. This list includes eBay, General Electric,
GoDaddy, Microsoft, PayPal, Uber, Wikipins, Yahoo!, and Yammer to name a few.

Projects, Applications, and Companies Using Node

Where to Use Node.js?

Following are the areas where Node.js is proving itself as a perfect technology partner.

I/O bound Applications

Data Streaming Applications

Data Intensive Real-time Applications (DIRT)

JSON APIs based Applications

Single Page Applications