Introduction to Node.js

Introduction to Node.js 

Node.js is a JavaScript runtime built on Chrome's V8 JavaScript engine. Node.js uses an event-driven, non-blocking I/O model that makes it lightweight and efficient. Node.js' package ecosystem, npm, is the largest ecosystem of open source libraries in the world.

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.

Features of Node.js

Following are some of the important features of Node.js 

• Asynchronous and Event Driven − All APIs of Node.js library are asynchronous, that is, non-blocking. It 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.
• Fast − Being built on Google Chrome's V8 JavaScript Engine, Node.js library is very fast in code execution.
• Single Threaded and 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. 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 open source and is released under the MIT license

Where to Use Node.js

Node.js can be used in the following 

• I/O bound Applications
• Data Streaming Applications
• Data Intensive Real-time Applications (DIRT)
• JSON APIs based Applications
• Single Page Applications