Node.js is built on Google Chrome's JavaScript runtime. It helps you build scalable network applications. With event-driven, non-blocking I/O model, it offers efficiency which is ideal for data-intensive real-time applications that run across distributed devices. Node.js is a platform. It works on the server-side. Node.js can function with other front-end toolset(s) such as AngularJS.
Node.js can be used to build different types of applications such as command line application, web application, real-time chat application, REST API server etc. However, it is mainly used to build network programs like web servers, similar to PHP, Java, or ASP.NET.
Features of Node.js :
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.
