Kotlin vs Node JS for REST Api's
I couldn't find any proper explanation regarding the differences b/w Kotlin and Node JS for REST APIs
Which is better in performance wise?
Let me set the context. Its Kotlin/JVM vs JS/Node.js. We cannot blindly say that this language is better. In general Kotlin is supposed to be faster since it compiled language compared to JS which is interpreted language.
Irrespective of the language used, we will discuss on the API architecture. Serving the APIs can be implemented in either blocking or non-blocking way (I am not going to explain about what it is). Traditionally before a few of years Java/Kotlin with Spring have been using the blocking architecture which delivered performance X. On a contrary, Node.js is based on non-blocking architecture which gave us better performance than the blocking architecture and architecture style is the only reason why Node.js performed better. Later Spring released a newer version of the framework to support non-blocking architecture. The non-blocking style is called as Reactive programming/Spring Webflux.
So now both of the languages support non-blocking architecture. In terms of raw language performance, Kotlin will be better since its compiled language. Also in theory interpreted languages are supposed to be slower. But we cannot say which is better without any testing.
Personally I am fan of Java/Spring because of OOPS and later at one point I started using TS/Node.js. TS eliminates most of the runtime issues with its type checking. But still we cannot compare it with the type system available in Java/Kotlin. As a language I feel Java/Kotlin is superior and one thing I like most in JavaScript is handling objects/JSON. Checkout "Kotlin for JavaScript" as well which lets you write in Kotlin and transpile to JS. Ignore this "Kotlin for JavaScript" feature, I am planning to try Kotlin/Spring in non-blocking architecture for my future projects. If you have usecases with WebSockets, I think Node.js will perform better and I am not sure If there are any libraries in Java/Kotlin since I havn't explored it.
One disadvantage in non-blocking style is that I need to pass the login context object to almost all the methods in the project. In blocking architecture we will add the login context information in thread local so that we can access it anywhere until the request is completed.
I am sure that I did not answer your question completely. But I hope that the information what I have give is useful.
Correct me If I am wrong in any of the aspects.
Related
The 'request' module has been a long-time standard for Node.js. They have recently deprecated the library.
I am starting a new project, and looking for the best solution to do my networking. I started off using the native 'https' module, but ran into problem after problem. Using the request module seemed to be easy and work just fine. There are also many other libraries to replace the request module.
Generally speaking, you should avoid using deprecated libraries when possible. But does that rule of thumb apply here?
Is it bad to start a new project with the 'request' module? If so, what is the new standard?
I would personally not start a new project with the request() library unless it has a feature that no other library has that I absolutely need or unless I need another module that depends upon the request() module itself.
When I have the freedom to choose, I'm using got() for new projects instead. Choosing from the list of alternatives is a personal decision so you just have to evaluate the type of interface they each have and what features they have. For what I typically do with this type of library, got() seemed simple and clean, built from the ground up with promises, meets my needs and I've had no problems using it.
Axios, node-fetch and superagent have advantages in that you can use a similar interface in both node.js and in the browser. All are popular and in wide use.
I tried bent, but didn't click with its programming interface.
I'd personally rather be using libraries that have a stated objective to continue to evolve with new developments in the language, new developments in nodejs libraries and add new features over time rather than a library that says it will not be adding new features.
I also like using a library that has promise support built-in from the core rather than added on only as a wrapper since I do all asynchronous programming with promises now.
Some other resources in examining the alternatives:
Feature comparison chart (written by the makers of got())
Migrating to got() from request
And, if you want to read about why the request() library has gone into maintenance mode, read here.
In a nutshell, it's an old architecture with tons of features glued onto the side, but because there are so many modules dependent upon it, they can't really break their API to fix or smooth things out. And, because it's so popular, it is holding back the success of competing solutions that have designed a cleaner interface. So, the decision was made to let the alternatives that have been designed in a more modern way take the mantle going forward and request() will go into maintenance mode to continue to support the other modules that are dependent upon it, but not try to evolve into a more modern interface.
Request isn’t really deprecated. It’s no longer considering new features or breaking changes, but it is still being maintained. It’s safe to use for the foreseeable future, but how good an idea it is to use it is up to the developer. Not really a right or wrong answer here.
They’ve stopped new work on it because they believe the patterns it uses are out of date and to switch over to modern patterns would effectively make request an entirely new module, so rather than invalidate thousands of blogs and SO answers by making a massive update, they’ve decided to stop in order to make space for a new standard to emerge that effectively uses new features. As of yet, a new standard does not exist.
If you like request, and the outdated patterns it uses are good for your purposes, then go for it. But new patterns and features exist for a reason, and they might be worth exploring.
The author of request mentions that request was written in the old ways when the best practices were so different. He tried to recreate a similar library with better practices and made bent.
I would say the only problem with request was not the underlying code, but also its interface: callbacks belong to the stone age and make your code ugly.
My personal suggestion would be using RxJS-based solutions:
RxJS's bundled ajax library for frontend code (comes with rxjs),
RxJSx's request library for backend (#rxjsx/request).
I am developing a project and In this project I need calling multiple concurent web services ( least 5 webservice) asynchrously.
For that , whcih framework can be used Vertx , node , or Play
thanks
In play there is too much working out of the box. Node js will be nice if you can lose some time for writing your own tools.
All of these frameworks can be used.
Disclaimer: I work on the Play framework.
Given Play's Scala heritage, even if you're using Java, we provide Promises so that you can reason the flow of making async calls without suffering from what is known as "callback-hell". You may want to consider using promises for Node also... I believe they are available. I think Vert.x may offer something there too. I'm unsure but I don't believe Node and vert.x provide promises out of the box.
You may find this page useful: http://www.playframework.com/documentation/2.2.x/ScalaWS
Play documentation is not so good. If you are thinking to implement in scala play can be good option, but for java you may not find it so great as few things are not supported in Java (Eg to write a body parser of your own you need to use scala)
Nodejs can be a good choice however, in nodejs utilizing all the cpu cores is hard. There is a framework jxcore which claims to have a solution for this, but, I have not used it.
Vert.X IMO can be a good framework, it makes good use of all cpu cores, provides N event loops. Optionally, you can use worker thread pool if you really need to do cpu intensive operation and be responsive.
You can use vertx with RxJava module ( https://github.com/vert-x/mod-rxvertx ). You can combine your async results in anyway you want. rxvertx module supports wrappers for EventBus, HttpServer, HttpClient, NetServer, NetClient and Timer.
I am very new to node.js and I can not seem to find a definition anywhere as to what node.js bindings are. I have seen this term used in slides and nodejs talks but it was never clearly explained. Can anyone help clarify this concept for me? I have attached a picture of what I am referring to.
Rather than understanding what node.js bindings are, it is more useful to understand what "bindings" are in the first place.
Let's say you are writing a web application where a node.js (JavaScript) backend:
receives requests from clients,
conducts queries to databases,
sorts the query results and finally
returns the results to the client.
Now normally you would write all the code yourself. However, you know that there is an excellent sorting library that can take care of step 3 (i.e. sorting query results). The only problem is that the library is written in a system programming language such as C/C++ whereas your code is written in JavaScript. Normally you can't use that library in your code because they are in different programming languages, but with bindings, you can.
Bindings basically are libraries that "bind" two different programming languages so that code written in one language can be used in code written in another library. With the presence of bindings, you don't have to write all the code again just because they are in different languages. Another motivation for bindings is that you can benefit from the advantages of different programming languages. For example, C/C++ are much faster than JavaScript. It might be beneficial to write some code in C/C++ for performance purposes.
Now let's take a look at the picture you attached. V8 engine, according to Google Official website, is "written in C++". libuv adds a layer of abstraction that provides asynchronous I/O operations, written in C. However, the core functionalities of Node.js, such as networking, Database queries, file system I/O, are provided in libraries (or modules if you prefer) that are written in JavaScript. Plus, your code is written in JavaScript as well. Now in order for these pieces of technology written in different programming languages to communicate with each other, you have to "bind" them together, using bindings. These bindings are node.js bindings.
I've written an article lately that explains the architecture of Node.js' internal codebase where I explained how binds fit into Node.js!
Node.js bindings are series of methods that can be used in Node.js code which are in reality just running C++ code behind the scenes.
fs.readFile()
This method is not part of javascript. It's provided to v8 as part of the node.js runtime. So javascript does not know how to read a file from disk but C++ does. So when we use javascript code and node.js to read a file from disk it just defers all of that to the C++ function that can actually read the file from disk and get the results back.
Javascript also has bindings in the browser too. for example;
document.querySelector()
is not a javascript code. It is implemented by chrome V8 engine.
Upon further research i've come across this article. I hope this helps anyone out:
http://pravinchavan.wordpress.com/2013/11/08/c-binding-with-node-js/
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I'm feeling a bit confused, there are so many frameworks out there for Node.js related 'stuff'. Would someone be able to give me an overview of What are the differences between Backbone.js and Node.js? And which is best? Thanks in advance.
I am quoting it from a couple of sources here:
Firstly, to quote from the stack overflow question here:
Most of the things you listed are related only because they are
written in or otherwise use JavaScript. Comparing them is much like
comparing apples to oranges. It's like asking what the difference is
between a Toyota Camry and a V6 engine. They are related, but do
different things.
Node
Also known as Node.js, Node is the JavaScript environment on which we
run our server-side JavaScript code. It is based on the V8 JavaScript
engine. All of the JavaScript code you write, or install and run
from packages from NPM, GitHub, etc. is executed by the Node runtime
environment.
Backbone
Backbone can be likened to as a Model-View-Controller
framework for JavaScript. I believe it was originally written for the
browser; it helps keep your client-side JavaScript clean by
implementing most common MVC patterns (as well as a couple other
things), allowing you to more easily connect your client-side
JavaScript to your server-side code.
Also, this is from an answer for the same question on Quora. Credit goes to Drew Harry:
They're almost completely unrelated. Traditionally, Backbone.js is a
client library and Node.js is a way to write server-side applications
in Javascript. Backbone aims to be a model + view system for binding
data models with DOM elements that represent that model visually in a
web page. Backbone also provides Collections of Models, as well as a
bunch of utility functions for synchronizing those models with their
server-side representations.
Node.js is just the v8 Javascript run-time environment packaged with a
standard library to do useful server-side things with Javascript.
There are lots of packages designed for Node (check out npm for ways
to easily install those packages, Backbone included) that extend it to
do all sorts of interesting things. It's possible to use Backbone.js
with Node.js, but Backbone isn't particularly designed with use on the
server in mind.
Go and upvote the above answer(s) if you find the material helpful.
Pretty much the only things those two have in common is that they're Javascript based and have a lot of hype surrounding them (not undeserved though).
node.js is a framework for Javascript server applications. It includes the V8 Javascript engine developed for Chrome. It's asynchronous and event-driven, so it's ideal for serving large numbers of small requests.
backbone.js is a framework for client-side web applications, specifically for so-called "single page web applications" where only a single HTML page is sent to the browser at the beginning, and every interaction thereafter is handled by AJAX requests and Javascript logic that transforms the page.
This means that the two can also work effectively together: an app implemented using backbone.js for the frontend could have its AJAX requests handled by a server part using node.js - a rather popular combination since it allows you to have an entire web app using only Javascript.
Backbone.js is a javascript library, similar to jQuery or YUI but addressing different needs.
Node.js is a javascript interpreter, similar to Internet Explorer or Firefox or Safari but addressing different needs.
I don't know much about backbone.js but I believe you can use it with Node.js since it uses regular javascript. You may need a DOM emulation layer for the DOM related stuff though.
Additional answer:
A bit of googling reveals that there are people out there using Backbone on Node.js. The advantage of this is obviously you'll be able to use the same framework and reuse code on both client and server.
See: http://nerds.airbnb.com/weve-launched-our-first-nodejs-app-to-product
More additional answer:
With regards to semantics I see that some people disagree what some terms in computing means. While the terms are loosely used, and while they are somewhat interchangeable, they do have fairly well defined meanings.
In general, an interpreter is an executable, that is, a program that takes as input some data and executes it as a program. V8 is not this. It cannot take javascript by itself and run it. It needs to be compiled into another program, an interpreter in order to run javascript.
V8 does ship with example code to build an interpreter though. That interpreter shipped with V8 is called V8-shell.
An engine is a library that implements an interpreter. This is exactly what V8 is.
The two terms above are somewhat interchangeable because the word "interpreter" can also validly be used in place of "engine" to describe what a library implements. But that usage of the word is similar to the usage of "MVC framework" or "UI toolkit" in that it is used as an adjective. So it is correct to say that an "interpreter" is a kind of library.
But the word was originally used to mean the binary that executes a programming language. When used this way one uses it as a noun as it refers to something on the file system. Used this way is similar to the usage of the "compiler". For example one would call clang a compiler in this sense and one would call llvm, the library used by clang, a compiler in the previous sense.
Lets take a look at something that is not javascript as an example:
tcl is a programming language
tcl is also the library that implements the interpreter for tcl. In other words the engine.
tclsh is the tcl interpreter
Let's take a look at another example:
ruby is a programming language
RubyC is one of the many engines for ruby
ruby is the interpreter that uses RubyC
Nobody uses the word "framework" when referring to the binary executable interpreter for the above two languages. It just sounds silly.
But wait you say, Node.js refers to more than just node.exe. It truly provides a bunch of additional features that can be used as a good foundation to write great programs. In other words a framework.
Well, yes. That being true does not make the usage of the word "interpreter" to refer to node.exe automatically invalid. Just as using the word "earth" to refer to the planet does not make using the word to refer to soil automatically invalid.
Besides, those extra functionality? That's true for tcl and ruby as well. It's also true for C. Those extra functionality like fs and http on Node.js are traditionally called standard library. While the Node.js project calls it a framework that's their choice. Almost nobody else calls their interpreter + standard library a framework. PHP for example is distributed exactly like Node.js with a bunch of very high level standard libraries but nobody would call PHP a framework. It's also a bit silly when people write actual frameworks on top of node - frameworks for a framework. But I'm not going to say they are wrong because they choose to call it that. It's just their way to describe what they've created. More power to them.
What I am saying is that people who say that node.js is not an interpreter is ignoring the usage of the word throughout the history of computing. I don't know. Coming from an asian background it's natural to me to assume that everything belongs to multiple categories. Maybe it's a western idea that things belong strictly to specific categories that I don't quite get.
So here are the facts:
Node.js is not simply a javascript library. You need node.exe to use the standard libraries that node ships with.
Backbone.js is on the other hand a standard javascript library. It is not an executable.
Node.js is the only example where an interpreter + library is called a framework so far. All other examples of framework I know of in programming refer to libraries that implement a design pattern.
Calling something "B" does not automatically make calling it "A" invalid.
One final thing: web browsers also come with a very large high level standard library for javascript. It's called the DOM (there's also a bunch of other stuff like Math and XMLHttpRequest but the DOM is the biggest). Accordingly one should call Internet Explorer and Firefox javascript frameworks but nobody does that.
Node.js :
Javascript for backend side. ( like : php, ruby on rails, python, etc. )
Backbone.js :
Javascript for frontend side ( running on the browser of your client )
backbone.js also uses jquery , more frameworks of javascript for client side are :
1. mootools
2. ExtJS
3. dojo
4. prototype
and many more ...
Both are javascript related but totally different.
Node is a interpreter/platform to execute javascript code in the server such as JDK or Ruby. To put it simple, you need NodeJS installed to interpret Backbone based script on the server.
When it comes to server side MVC., Geddy, RailwayJS, Express etc., considered to be serving the purpose better than Backbone.
Whereas Backbone is a champion MVC framework in the client side.
Node.js is a server-side platform designated for building network applications. It is built on Google's V8 Javascript Engine and uses asynchronous event-driven approach for building applications. Backbone.js is a simply javascript client library that makes it easier to create and maintain client-side code and comply with MVC pattern. Hence, they cannot be compared.
Backbone.js has a lot of alternatives that use slightly different approach to achieve the same goal. Most known are: knockout, ember.js and others. And it also can be plugged into node.js application.
Our new project will get a lot of concurrent requests. I don't have a lot of experience with this. Any suggestions? I've looked at NodeJS, Twisted, EventMachine & Tornado but I don't have any way to measure how suitable they will be.
Any suggestions?
Ask yourself the following questions (at least) and then decide:
What language do I (or/and my colleagues) know? If you know Python you could choose Twisted, if you know Ruby you can choose EventMachine or if you are really good with JavaScript you could choose Node.js. (only Erlang wouldn't have an advantage here)
Do I want to use a language construct (Erlang, Node.js) or a library (Twisted, EventMachine)?
Do I need a lot of resources, community support, books etc? Check out for yourself how big are their channels on IRC, you'll make an idea. (I may be biased, but I see tons of people on the Node.js channels and they are really helpful)
How mature do you want the framework to be? (Node for example has 2 years, Erlang has been officially released in `98, etc)
What companies/products are using what async frameworks? (for example CouchDB has been built with Erlang, Node.js is used by Github, Linkedin and others, EventMachine is used by PostRank, 37 signals etc)
The suitability of specific non-blocking framework may be dependent on certain aspects, such as:
Preferred language/platform - someone can be versed in specific language which might speed up the development. Also finding a skilled people might be a problem.
Availability of non-blocking libraries for your framework - for example most of the node.js modules are by default non-blocking compared to other frameworks where you might run into a problem of finding a non-blocing version of library which offers desired functionality.
Documentation and community support is essential.
As others say - you should go with the one that has the non-blocking libraries (e.g. DB drivers) you need and, if possible, uses the language your team knows. Popularity may also be an advantage.
If you're programming in Python, gevent might also be a good option. There is even a Socket.IO implementation.
Develop a metric to measure suitability, then use that metric. How can anyone here tell you which one is the most suitable if you don't provide any basis for evaluation?
Wait, scratch that. Twisted is the most suitable for everything, always, no matter what.