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Best Node.JS Open Source Projects

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Recently, there has been a lot of talk about a new trendy technology in the world of web development. What exactly is Node.js and why did it become so popular in a short term? Is it worth to study at all?

As of lately, there is no shortage of training materials on Node.js, but most of them cover either some specific use cases or topics that are applicable even when you have a working Node.js Here and there I see comments like “I downloaded Node.js, what do I do now? “. The article will answer this question and explain what Node.js is and what the best open source projects are.

What is Node.js?

Node or Node.js is a software platform based on the V8 engine (translating JavaScript into machine code), which turns JavaScript from a highly specialized language into a general-purpose language. Node.js adds the ability of JavaScript to interact with I / O devices through its API (written in C ++), connect other external libraries written in different languages, providing calls to them from JavaScript code. Node.js is used primarily on the server. Node.js is based on event-oriented and asynchronous (or reactive) programming with non-blocking I / O.

It is important to understand that Node is not a web server. It does not do anything by itself. This is not Apache. There is no config-file, which indicates the path to the HTML-files. If you need an HTTP server, you need to write an HTTP server (using built-in libraries). Node.js is just another way to run code on your computer. This is just the environment for running JavaScript.

Reasons to use Node.js in projects

+Programs from Google, IBM, Paypal and other well-known corporations are scripted with the help of Node.js programming language. Node.js open source projects are so popular since NODE.JS processes are executed in parallel, the whole system works much faster and copes with large loads, which means stability and speed of your application.

+Another great feature of best open source Node.js projects is the ease with which you can create soft real-time systems. I mean things like Twitter, chats, bets on sports events or interfaces to IM-protocols.

+While Node.js is still very young, there is a temptation to write specifically everything that you needed. But it can be much more beneficial to use a huge selection of pre-existing command-line tools. Node is able to generate thousands of processes and work with their output data streams, which can give serious advantages to those who do not want to reinvent the wheel.

+The Node.js community is now growing at a frantic pace, attracting the best developers in the industry. This means that the Node ecosystem is also growing, it is increasingly easier to get support for free or on a commercial basis.

Most Helpful Node.JS Open Source Projects

  1. Express

Express is a minimalistic, flexible and the most popular Node.js modular framework that provides a wide set of features for web and mobile applications, being one of the best node js projects. It simplifies development and helps to build secure, modular and fast apps.

  1. Hapi

Hapi  is a framework that enables building web applications and services with reusable application logic. It will save you the time you spend on building infrastructure. The framework is continuously developed and updated by an active community, giving developers a reliable and stable tool for their projects.

  1. VSCode

VSCode is a source code editor which is available for Windows, macOS and Linux. It provides built-in support for JavaScript, TypeScript and Node.js and has a rich ecosystem of extensions for other languages. It is updated monthly, providing developers with new upgrades and bug fixes.

  1. Electron

Electron is a framework for building native cross-platform desktop apps with JavaScript, HTML and CSS. It is an open source project maintained by GitHub that combines Node.js with Chromium and a lot of C++ to make native OS operations easier. It is compatible with Mac, Windows and Linux.

  1. ESLint

ESLint is an open source project that provides a pluggable linting utility for JavaScript. It enables identifying and reporting patterns found in ECMAScript/JavaScript code, making code more consistent and avoiding bugs.

  1. TypeScript

ESLint is a language for application-scale JavaScript that adds optional types, classes and modules to JS. It supports tools for large-scale JavaScript apps for any browser, any host and on any OS. It compiles to clean, simple, readable, standards-based JavaScript, being one of the most interesting node js projects.

  1. Chai

Chai is a BDD / TDD assertion library for node and the browser that can be easily paired with any javascript testing framework. A developer can choose one of the several interfaces provided and also leverage plugins that have already been built.

  1. Sinon

Sinon, similarly to Chai, is a testing tool for the Node.js ecosystem. It provides standalone test spies, stubs and mocks for JavaScript.

  1. Mocha

Mocha is a JavaScript test framework running on Node.js and in the browser. It is hosted on GitHub. Mocha tests run serially, enabling flexible and precise reporting while mapping uncaught exceptions to the correct test cases.

  1. Request

Request is a third party module to simplify http calls. It supports HTTPS and follows redirects by default, but you can always configure that. It provides shorthand methods, custom configurations, as well as the basics of the streaming API.

  1. Restify

Restify is a node.js module that enables creating correct REST web services. It helps build “strict” API services that are maintainable and observable.

  1. fs-extra and fs-promise

fs-extra and fs-promise are Node.js packages available in npm registry. fs-extra adds file system methods that aren’t included in the native fs module, whereas fs-promise adds support for async functions from fs-extra.

  1. simple-peer

simple-peer provides simple one-to-one WebRTC video, voice and data channels. It works both in Node and the browser. It also supports advanced options like enabling/disabling trickle ICE candidates, manual set config and constraints options.

  1. Moment

Moment is of the most popular open source projects. It uses JavaScript date library for parsing, validating, manipulating and formatting dates. It works both in the browser and in Node.js. It is very easy to customise and also offers multiple plugins developed by the community.

  1. Node inspector

Node inspector is an effective Node.js debugger interface that uses the Blink Developer Tools. It provides a wide set of powerful features that help debug Node.js code with ease.

  1. Walmart

In a nutshell, Walmart is able to serve some very sophisticated features to mobile users on the client side using Node. It’s saving mobile shoppers a ton of time by customizing content based on device type and browser capabilities.

  1. Netflix

Netflix Github is a good example of choosing the best language for the job. It is a very diverse array of many languages. If they are still Node in 2017, then the project was a good use case for the language.

  1. PayPal

Node.js at PayPal talks about their decision to start using NodeJS as a way to prototype. The company was weighing was how long the project would take, how many people it would require, how much code would need to be written and the performance. Seemed like Node.js was the best choice

  1. Uber

Dispatching systems at Uber run on Node, the server-side JavaScript platform. When a customer opens an app or visits the website to book a ride or uses APIs to see what vehicles are available, most of those systems run on Node.

  1. Pay Pal

Like many other open source projects, Node.js was introduced as a prototype platform. Together with all the qualities, the high proficiency was confirmed, so that it was decided to give it a move on the production of Pay Pal.

I hope this article will help fill the gap between downloading Node.js and developing your first small application. Node.js is an extremely powerful and flexible technology for a wide range of tasks.

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