I'm new to the front end development and modern technologies MEAN/MERN stack, I am confuse about difference between node.js and express can someone outline differences or advantages
and one can learn express.js directly or it's a pre requisite to learn node.js first?
Node.js is a JavaScript runtime built on Chrome’s V8 JavaScript engine. It is used to run JavaScript in ways similar to how the browser runs JavaScript but on servers. Express is a library (called a package in the Node.js ecosystem) that makes it really easy to build APIs or serve files.
Node.js is a platform for creating server-side event-driven I/o application using javascript.
Express.js is a framework based on node.js for developing web-application using principles and methods of node.js.
In simpler terms, express.js makes handling API requests and server management easier than using only node.js
Express js is built on top of the Node.js framework.
Express js uses node.js itself and provides more features to build applications on top Node.js
Node.js: Node.js is a Javascript runtime environment for executing Javascript code outside of a browser.
Express.js: Express.js is fast and light-weigh framework for building web applications.
You should first learn Node.js and it's core modules like path, fs, os, events and others.
After that you should learn asynchronous Node.js like callback, Promises and async/await.
Then you should learn express framework.
Related
What is the difference between nodejs and expressjs and
Is it possible to create webpage only using nodejs?
Node.js is an open-source, cross-platform JavaScript run-time environment for executing JavaScript code server-side. Node allows you to write and run Javascript code server-side.
Express.js is a framework for Node.js. Basically instead of writing 20 lines of code for a simple functionality with Node.js, you can write it in 2 lines using Express.js.
You can write the webapp using Node.js, but I don`t recommend it. Express is a minimalistic framework and it will make you life easier.
Node.js is an open-source, cross-platform JavaScript run-time environment for executing JavaScript code server-side. Node allows you to write and run Javascript code server-side.
Express.js is a framework for Node.js
Express is built on top of Node, so yes Express adds more features. Node is just a Javascript environment with libraries to make it easy to write software, where Express extends Node specifically to make webservers easy to write.
Express/Connect adds the concept of middleware, a simplified way of managing different routes, automated integration with several templating engines and a bunch more.
All nodejs framework in here
Help it help you.
Thanks.
I'm seeing several responses of comparisons of Express vs Node, what each is/does but still a little unclear how one relates to the other.
Wondering if this would be a good analogy?
JavaScript : jQuery = Node.js : Express.js
Node.js is a platform for building server-side event-driven i/o application using javascript.
Express.js is a framework that is based on node.js for building web-application
node.js is a Javascript runtime environment that comes with a ton of libraries.
Express is a Javascript library that runs in node.js and offers advanced features for configuring and running a web server.
So, you can have a web server in node.js without Express (the built-in http module offers a simple web server), but you cannot use Express without node.js since Express runs on top of node.js. Express adds many more features (such as routing and middleware and tons of compatible add-ons) over the built-in web server.
Your analogy of Browser Javascript ==> jQuery as compared to Node.js ==> Express is a good comparison. jQuery adds DOM manipulation features to regular browser Javascript while Express adds web server features to regular node.js web servers.
My understanding is that AngularJS including Angular2 is a client-side framework, while Node.JS is a server side platform. They should not cross. But all Angular2 tutorials I found use Node/NPM. Why is that?
Because npm is a package manager for packages written in JavaScript, and JavaScript can run both on client and server side. In other words, frontend and backend applications can both benefit from packages. Many development tools also use node as an underlying process (e.g. Jest-cli).
I would suggest you to use angular2 only on client side. The performance of angular2 really shines when it comes to handling view containers over regular server side codes. On the NodeJS side, I would recommend using es6 features. Which has revolutionised how you can not only code, but also performance.
The reason you see most tutorials using npm is because they are either using TypeScript or a build tool that uses Node to convert to ES5 or build your project.
However you can still build Angular2 apps using the sfx version (self-executing bundle) of Angular2 and using ES5 syntaxes without having to use node or npm. Here is a blog post that shows how to do that
http://blog.thoughtram.io/angular/2015/05/09/writing-angular-2-code-in-es5.html
Angular2 is a front-end framework but a lot of tooling that assists in building Angular2 applications are available via NPM.
If you want a package manager that's geared specifically to front-end development I suggest JSPM. It supports front-end modules of various formats (ie AMD, CommonJS, UMD), handles transpiling out of the box, and can be used as a build tool to concatenate/minify your application code.
You'll still need NPM for many other utilities and you'll need a back-end server for testing (I recommend live-server).
As far as the back-end is concerned. One of the Angular2 dev teams is working on a Node/Express extension that supports isomorphic rendering of JS. In short, it pre-renders the view on the server so the user can interact with it in the browser while the app loads in the background. The start time of launching a fully-featured SPA will still be kind of slow (relatively) but perceived speed will be instantaneous.
I've been working on node,grunt,bower and yeoman from couple of months. I came across MEAN stack applications, in which expressjs is providing the server environment(my understanding). Are both grunt and express similar?
Requesting for some helpful link on express and MEAN stack.
Express is a webserver framework on top of nodejs (like symphony for php).
Grunt is an automation tool (like make or gulp) and not a webserver.
The only thing they have in common is, that they use the JavaScript programming language.
MEAN is a full stack environment for developing web applications. MEAN uses MongoDB as database backend, Express as webserver framework, AngularJs for the client side and all is based on NodeJs. When your application gets more complex and you need some sort of deployment procedure you may use Grunt to automate this.
I am going to create my first angular application. I have read lots of angular tutorial and many of them mentioned node.js.I am really got confused here.
Do we really need to install node.js and other dependencies to run angular application ?
Can't I just add respective angular libraries in my eclipse and create Angular application?
What are advantages of using node.js?
Also it is necessary to add all angular code is under App folder?
Regards,
Dip
As it is said on note.js website
Node.js is a platform built on Chrome's JavaScript runtime for easily building fast, scalable network applications. Node.js uses an event-driven, non-blocking I/O model that makes it lightweight and efficient, perfect for data-intensive real-time applications that run across distributed devices.
So it depends if you want to have server logic (services) or not. If you are creating just the UI of the app you don't need note.js. Also Angular is NOT dependable on note.js