Node.Js Vs AngularJS: Know the Difference

What is Node JS?

Node.js is a cross-platform runtime library and environment for running JavaScript applications outside the browser. This is a free and open source tool used for creating server-side JS applications.

Node.js applications are written in JavaScript. This application can runs within the Node.js runtime on Linux and Microsoft Windows. This framework offers a rich library of various JavaScript modules to simplify web development process.

What is Angular JS?

AngularJS is a structural framework for developing dynamic web apps. It allows developers to use HTML as template language and lets HTML's syntax to express application's components briefly but clearly.

It is a full-featured JavaScript framework, with the primary goal of simplification. It provides support for developing dynamic, single page web apps and supports the (MVC) programming structure.

Node JS VS. Angular JS

Node.JS	Angular JS
Node.js is a cross-platform run-time environment for applications written in JavaScript language.	AnglarJS is an open source web application development framework developed by Google.
You need to install Node.js on the computer system.	You just need to add AngularJS file just like any other JavaScript file to use it in applications.
It is written in C, C++ and JavaScript languages. Node.js supports non-blocking input/output API and an event-driven architecture.	AngularJS is written entirely in JavaScript. It also allows extending the HTML's syntax to describe the components of your application.
Node.js is useful to build fast and scalableserver-side networking applications.	This framework is best suited for building single-page client-side web applications.
Node.js has many different frameworks like Sails.js, Partial.js, and Express.js,.	AngularJS is itself web application framework.
It is Ideal for developing small size projects.	It is Ideal for creating highly active and interactive web apps.
Developers can use JavaScript on the client as well as the server. So they can focus on learning one language.	Angular JS needs a deep understanding of prototyping, scope, and various other JavaScript aspects.
Node.js is quite useful for generating database queries because JavaScript is used to write database queries for databases like MongoDB, CouchDB. This reduces the developer's task as they don't need to remember the syntax differences while combining Node.js and NoSQL databases.	Almost all otjer frameworks implement MVC by asking splitting an app into MVC components. It is difficult task, but Angular makes it simple as it implements MVC by splitting the app into MVC components.
Node.js will be an ideal option for the real-time collaborative drawing/editing-type apps, where the user can see the document being modify live by another user like Dropbox or Google Docs.	Angular's declarative approach simplifies app development in a sort of WYSIWYG way. Instead of spending time on how the program flows and what loaded first the developers can define what they want, and Angular JS will take care of the dependencies.
Node.js will be useful in situations when something faster and more scalable is needed.	Angular is useful in creating real time applications like instant messaging or chat apps.

What Is Better Node JS Or Angular JS?

Both Node.js and AngularJS platforms are targeted at building web applications using JavaScript. However, both of them are different in their architecture and working. Node.js mainly used to build server-side applications. AngularJS is suited for building single-page client-side web applications.

These two frameworks are high performing, advanced and widely used worldwide. So one should select according to his/her project need.

Conclusion:

• Node.js is a cross-platform runtime library and environment for running JavaScript applications outside the browser.
• Node.js offers a rich library of various JavaScript modules which can simplify coding.
• AngularJS is a structural framework for developing dynamic web apps.
• The goal of Angular JS framework is to provide simplified the development process.
• Node JS is Ideal for developing small size projects while Angular JS is a great option for long size projects.
• Both Node.js and AngularJS platforms are targeted at building web applications using JavaScript. However, both of them are different in their architecture and working

Basics of Node.js

Introduction to Node.js

The modern web application has really come a long way over the years with the introduction of many popular frameworks such as bootstrap, Angular JS, etc. All of these frameworks are based on the popularJavaScript framework.

But when it came to developing server based applications there was just kind of a void, and this is where Node.js came into the picture.

Node.js is also based on the JavaScript framework, but it is used for developing server-based applications. While going through the entire tutorial, we will look into Node.js in detail and how we can use it to develop server based applications.

What is Node.js?

Node.js is an open-source, cross-platform runtime environment used for development of server-side web applications. Node.js applications are written in JavaScript and can be run on a wide variety of operating systems.

Node.js is based on an event-driven architecture and a non-blocking Input/Output API that is designed to optimize an application's throughput and scalability for real-time web applications.

Over a long period of time, the framework available for web development were all based on a stateless model. A stateless model is where the data generated in one session (such as information about user settings and events that occurred) is not maintained for usage in the next session with that user.

A lot of work had to be done to maintain the session information between requests for a user. But with Node.js there is finally a way for web applications to have a real-time, two-way connections, where both the client and server can initiate communication, allowing them to exchange data freely.

Why use Node.js?

Over the years, most of the applications were based on a stateless request-response framework. In these sort of applications, it is up to the developer to ensure the right code was put in place to ensure the state of web session was maintained while the user was working with the system.

But with Node.js web applications, you can now work in real-time and have a 2-way communication. The state is maintained, and the either the client or server can start the communication.

Features of Node.js

Let's look at some of the key features of Node.js

1. Asynchronous event driven IO helps concurrent request handling – This is probably the biggest selling points of Node.js. This feature basically means that if a request is received by Node for some Input/Output operation, it will execute the operation in the background and continue with processing other requests.
   This is quite different from other programming languages. A simple example of this is given in the code below

var fs = require('fs'); 
          fs.readFile("Sample.txt",function(error,data)
          {
                console.log("Reading Data completed");
     });

• The above code snippet looks at reading a file called Sample.txt. In other programming languages, the next line of processing would only happen once the entire file is read.
• But in the case of Node.js the important fraction of code to notice is the declaration of the function ('function(error,data)'). This is known as a callback function.
• So what happens here is that the file reading operation will start in the background. And other processing can happen simultaneously while the file is being read. Once the file read operation is completed, this anonymous function will be called and the text "Reading Data completed" will be written to the console log.

2. Node uses the V8 JavaScript Runtime engine, the one which is used by Google Chrome. Node has a wrapper over the JavaScript engine which makes the runtime engine much faster and hence processing of requests within Node also become faster.
3. Handling of concurrent requests – Another key functionality of Node is the ability to handle concurrent connections with a very minimal overhead on a single process.
4. The Node.js library used JavaScript – This is another important aspect of development in Node.js. A major part of the development community are already well versed in javascript, and hence, development in Node.js becomes easier for a developer who knows javascript.
5. There are an Active and vibrant community for the Node.js framework. Because of the active community, there are always keys updates made available to the framework. This helps to keep the framework always up-to-date with the latest trends in web development.

Who uses Node.js

Node.js is used by a variety of large companies. Below is a list of a few of them.

• Paypal – A lot of sites within Paypal have also started the transition onto Node.js.
• LinkedIn - LinkedIn is using Node.js to power their Mobile Servers, which powers the iPhone, Android, and Mobile Web products.
• Mozilla has implemented Node.js to support browser APIs which has half a billion installs.
• Ebay hosts their HTTP API service in Node.js

When to Use Node.js

Node.js is best for usage in streaming or event-based real-time applications like

1. Chat applications
2. Game servers – Fast and high-performance servers that need to processes thousands of requests at a time, then this is an ideal framework.
3. Good for collaborative environment – This is good for environments which manage document. In document management environment you will have multiple people who post their documents and do constant changes by checking out and checking in documents. So Node.js is good for these environments because the event loop in Node.js can be triggered whenever documents are changed in a document managed environment.
4. Advertisement servers – Again here you could have thousands of request to pull advertisements from the central server and Node.js can be an ideal framework to handle this.
5. Streaming servers – Another ideal scenario to use Node is for multimedia streaming servers wherein clients have request's to pull different multimedia contents from this server.

Node.js is gooda when you need high levels of concurrency but less amount of dedicated CPU time.

Best of all, since Node.js is built on javascript, it's best suited when you build client-side applications which are based on the same javascript framework.

When to not use Node.js

Node.js can be used for a lot of applications with various purpose, the only scenario where it should not be used is if there are long processing times which is required by the application.

Node is structured to be single threaded. If any application is required to carry out some long running calculations in the background. So if the server is doing some calculation, it won't be able to process any other requests. As discussed above, Node.js is best when processing needs less dedicated CPU time.

What is AngularJS, Architecture & Features

• AngularJS is an open source Model-View-Controller framework which is similar to theJavaScript framework.
• Angular JS is probably one of the most popular modern day web frameworks available today.
• This framework is used for developing mostly Single Page applications. This framework has been developed by a group of developers from Google itself.

In this tutorial, you will learn-

• AngularJS Features
• Angularjs Architecture
• AngularJS Advantages

AngularJS Features

Angular has the following key features which makes it one of the powerful frameworks in the market.

1. MVC – The framework is built on the famous concept of MVC (Model-View-Controller). This is a design pattern used in all modern day web applications. This pattern is based on splitting the business logic layer, the data layer, and presentation layer into separate sections. The division into different sections is done so that each one could be managed more easily.
2. Data Model Binding – You don't need to write special code to bind data to the HTML controls. This can be done by Angular by just adding a few snippets of code.
3. Writing less code – When carrying out DOM manipulation a lot of JavaScript was required to be written to design any application. But with Angular, you will be amazed with the lesser amount of code you need to write for DOM manipulation.
4. Unit Testing ready – The designers at Google not only developed Angular but also developed a testing framework called "Karma" which helps in designing unit tests for AngularJS applications.

AngularJS Architecture

Angular.js follows the MVC architecture, the diagram of the MVC framework as shown below.

Angularjs Architecture Diagram

• The Controller represents the layer that has the business logic. User events trigger the functions which are stored inside your controller. The user events are part of the controller.
• Views are used to represent the presentation layer which is provided to the end users
• Models are used to represent your data. The data in your model can be as simple as just having primitive declarations. For example, if you are maintaining a student application, your data model could just have a student id and a name. Or it can also be complex by having a structured data model. If you are maintaining a car ownership application, you can have structures to define the vehicle itself in terms of its engine capacity, seating capacity, etc.

AngularJS Advantages

• Since it's an open source framework, you can expect the number of errors or issues to be minimal.
• Two-way binding – Angular.js keeps the data and presentation layer in sync. Now you don't need to write additional JavaScript code to keep the data in your HTML code and your data later in sync. Angular.js will automatically do this for you. You just need to specify which control is bound to which part of your model.

• Routing – Angular can take care of routing which means moving from one view to another. This is the key fundamental of single page applications; wherein you can move to different functionalities in your web application based on user interaction but still stay on the same page.
• Angular supports testing, both Unit Testing, and Integration Testing.
• It extends HTML by providing its own elements called directives. At a high level, directives are markers on a DOM element (such as an attribute, element name, and comment or CSS class) that tell AngularJS's HTML compiler to attach a specified behavior to that DOM element. These directives help in extending the functionality of existing HTML elements to give more power to your web application.