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NodeJS Intro

What is Node.js?

Node.js is an open source server environment that empowers you to run JavaScript on the server. This is great for JavaScript developers who want to use an alternative to PHP or Python for server side code.

As an asynchronous event-driven JavaScript runtime, Node.js is designed to build scalable network applications.

Why use Node.js?

Node.js can do what other server side coding languages can do. It’s used for:

  • File handling – create, read, open, write, delete, update and close files on the server
  • Node.js can generate dynamic page content
  • Process form data
  • Node.js can also work with a database like MySQL to create a database driven website

Node.js Vs PHP – File Handling

Node.jsPHP
Send a task to the OS’s operating systems file systemSend a task to the OS’s operating systems file system
Ready to handle the next requestWaits for the file to open and then read the file
Once the file system has opened and the file read, the content is returned to the clientReturns the content to the client
Ready to handle the next request

Node.js doesn’t wait for the processing to be done before moving onto the next request. It runs asynchronously which makes it perform better and more efficient with memory.

Node.js for development

Node.js is also widely used for automating development functionality and is used in conjunction with Gulp.js, WebPack and other task managers which will be covered in other tutorials.

You can install node.js by downloading it to your computer and following the easy to follow prompts. Download Node.js

WordPress Theme Development Project with Node.js and Gulp

You can checkout code that I use on one of my projects called DevWP for WordPress Theme Development with Node and Gulp.



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