From the past few years, there is a buzzfeed in web application development concerning NodeJS and React. When these two names are taken together, they bring along specific questions with them.
- Which JavaScript library can perfectly fit my project needs?
- Can NodeJS and React work simultaneously?
- My product emphasizes on the interface; which one would be ideal, NodeJS or react?
And when experts are told to answer such questions, they usually acknowledge the fact that both NodeJS and React can be used together as complementary technologies. This may bring you to various why, how and when. And this is what our today’s article is about. We are here to discuss five significant reasons why one must include both React development outsourcing and NodeJS in a project.
But before we give you the required reasons, how about we explore their key factors first?
Let’s begin by answering some of the most frequent questions asked by the audience.
What is React? How can we use it?
React is not just a framework but a leading JavaScript front end library maintained by Facebook. Like many other libraries, it runs on web servers like Apache and functions with the backend like Ruby on Rails and PHP.
React was initially designed to work with web browsers, and this is why it possesses a React DOM library specifically to function with the browser’s DOM. But over the years of upgrade and advancement, it has become a cross-platform framework known as React Native. There is a slight difference between both platforms (React and React Native). Although here, we will only focus on React.
React allows you to create a web application that explicitly caters to typical issues like low performance, slow user interaction and DOM manipulations. React’s Virtual DOM manages all such problems and constantly analyzes the algorithm to overcome the difference between two UIs.
Hence, React is undoubtedly a primary choice for owners and enterprises looking to develop robust hybrid and native applications.
What is NodeJS? How can we use it?
NodeJS is a JavaScript runtime environment also considered as a full-stack JavaScript framework. If we go by the recent NodeJS user survey report, it says that more than 45% of the developers believe that it is an exemplary framework for enterprise development. The framework has everything required to create modern solutions such as web sockets, event queues, microservices etc.
NodeJS is an excellent backend technology since it is built on Chrome’s V8 engine and possesses event-driven nature. Interestingly, you can also use it as a single programming language which means it can write both front end and back end code for the server-side applications using JavaScript.
The strength and popularity of NodeJS are already known to the world. Giants like Twitter, Walmart, and NASA hire experienced NodeJS developers for their backend development.
Can we use NodeJS and React together?
This will sound quite different, but NodeJS is actually a convenient platform for hosting and running servers for React applications. How? We will prove it to you by stating two massive reasons:
- With the help of NPM (Node Package Manager), Node can work parallelly with the NPM registry. This allows the framework to install any package through the NPM CLI easily.
- The node will also help you bundle the React application into a single file for compilation. You can compile the file using the web pack and several other Node modules.
In addition to this, there are various advantages to using NodeJS to host and run the web server.
- With a speed optimized V8 engine, NodeJS addresses bulk requests to handle call back functions and enhance quality and quantity.
- Since React and Node are both Javascript frameworks, they can be executed simultaneously on the client-side and server-side.
- You can execute ReactJS code directly in the NodeJS environment.
- Also, the ReactDOM consists of elements specially designed to operate with NodeJS. Hence, using them together will help you reduce the line of code and make server-side rendering super easy.
Sometimes, changing the backend does not sound like a feasible option. Under such circumstances, you can take support of several NodeJS tools. For instance, you have RoR (Ruby on Rails) as your backend. You can still utilize NodeJS to host the server for your React application.
Coming back to our top five reasons to use NodeJS and React together.
Some specific reasons and conditions would help React developers to use NodeJS. The best part is, this duo can actually save you a lot of time and effort. You come up with even more scalable code, and your React application serves for longer.
To explore more wonders of React and NodeJS technology, here are the primary reasons :
High Server load-
When your React application is data intensive and constantly needs to manage multiple requests while balancing the server load, using NodeJS gives a big help. With its asynchronous nature, NodeJS is a master in handling bulk requests without compromising the loading time.
Real-time Data-
If your application’s core is entirely based on real-time data management or high data streaming, we would highly recommend you to use NodeJS with React for persistent server connection.
JSON APIs-
Building your JSON APIs for React applications can be very productive and efficient with NodeJS. React also promises code reusability and easy code sharing, which is the cherry on the cake.
Single Page Applications (SPAs)-
Here’s a situation. Develop a single page application in React while leveraging NodeJS for a lightweight backend. You get two incredible benefits out of it.
There will be asynchronous data loading through the call back function, and your application will not suffer from bulk requests.
MERN stack-
NodeJS can be used with React with MERN stack (Express, MongoDB, React and Node).
Final Analysis
Yes, both React and Node are opposite technologies that actually work magic if put together. This frontend-backend duo can do all sorts of scripting together. The most crucial part is that if you decide to use React and NodeJS together, you must know how to operate along with NPM. If used appropriately, you will be able to take your projects to a much higher level. Do let us know if this duo works out for you.