Best Node.js Performance Tips You Can Adopt
All of us know about the rapid adoption of JavaScript in the previous decade and major reason behind the popularity of JavaScript is the influence of Node.js. Node.js is the software platform used for building fast, robust and scalable network applications. It is mainly based on Google’s V8 Javascript search engine or the Chrome browser runtime. Node.js features an eventdriven architecture and an I/O API that optimizes application scalability. One of the most important feature of Node.js is that it contains builtin library that acts as a web server and there is no need for web server such as IIS or Apache Web Server.
It is perceived that Javascript is the most used language on GitHub. Ryan Dahl, the creator of Node.js says , “ after over twenty years of statelessweb based on the stateless request-response paradigm, we finally have web applications with real time two way connections”. Need for adapting to the new technology of Node.js is actively discussed in global tech community including these prominent performance tips.
Going Asynchronous
Node.js is single threaded and there are lots of synchronous components that can lock up the entire application. It is practical to use an external library that has a blocking call and use of asynchronous API is the best possible solution. While choosing third party modules, it is to be ensured that external library does not revert to synchronous calls.
Keeping Code Small
Keeping code small and light is one of the most talked about node.js performance tips we can adopt. In the contemporary age of critical mobile application performance, it is important to keep Node.js code as compact as possible. Node.js is made compact for reducing latency as well as speeding things up.
Developers of node.js face the following questions during development stage
- “Do we really need this module”?
- “Why are we using this framework”?
- “Is it worth the overhead”?
“Is there another way to optimize application performance by concatenating multiple JS files into one?” This statement can be explained with the help of an example. If a web app has five Javascript files, the browser will make five separate HTTP requests to fetch them and the best approach would definitely be to concatenate those five files into a single one.
DO NOT use Node.js for static assets:
Don’t use Nodejs to serve static assets like client JS, CSS, fonts or images. This is not good because Node doesn’t do this efficiently. Say we ask for a reasonably large image file and we’re serving it from a Express mount-point, this works when we’re developing it locally, because it’s just us using it. No load really. Use NGINX or CDN to deliver such static assets to reduce the load on your application server.
Don’t Store Too Much in Sessions
By default in a typical Express web app, the session data is stored in memory. Storing too much data in the session, it adds significant load to the server. Instead storing their id in the session will reduce the load on an app server rather than storing the entire object. So, either you can switch to different storages like MongoDB or Redis to store session data or go sessionfree with EXPRESS JS.
Here is an example of initializing the session.
app.use(express.session({ secret: “mysterious triangle” }));
Run in Parallel
Generally if we want to run multiple functions at a time, we need to wait for the previous function to execute. So to reduce latency we can go for parallel operations to run. To execute these calls in parallel, we can use Step.JS (A simple control-flow library for node.JS that makes parallel execution, serial execution, and error handling painless). This accepts any number of functions as arguments and runs as the callback to the next step.
Use Client Side Rendering When Possible
DO NOT render (or send) templates from Node JS side. Do it on client side using templating engines like Handlebar. Infact better do it using CDN so it can be cached. For dynamic content (like data), deliver it via JSON. So after the initial page load, the only data sent to the client is the dynamic JSON, which is maximally efficient. This approach dramatically reduces the CPU, IO, and load on Node.js.
Major companies using NODEJS and Why?
Global business giants like PayPal, Yahoo, EBay, Netflix, The Mail Online, and Walmart are betting big on Node.js. Tech giants are passionate of embracing power of Node.js for embedded devices and robotics. Node.js dominates the real time web application arena by using push technology that gives them a distinctive edge over server side web applications.
Chat applications are classic examples of lightweight, real time and data intensive applications of Node.js. It has been debated that two way communication and communication has been there since many years in the form of Java applets or Flash.
The promising technology of Node.js plays a pivotal role in the technology realm of any large business organization. What would be the possible reason? It is only because Node.js allows web developers to build one code base using one language. Performance, scalability, and short web development cycles help Node.js to find a place in the big league of technology innovations in 21st century.
“Node.js powers our web applications and has allowed our teams to move much faster in bringing their designs to life” PayPal