5 Ways to Make Your Node JS Web App Faster

by Ronak Patel Co Founder | CEO @ Aglowid IT Solutions

JavaScript is the single most popular programming language in the world and Node is yet another invention that makes your development part absolutely easy. It is a trend to create backend programming. However, there are so many things involved to make it the most popular language. To say, Node.js is the JavaScript environment, it is very fast that gives your development process pace. But, it could be even faster, provided that you have created a nice setup and working environment.

There are some of the most notable things you can do speed up development while working with Node.js.

Parallel Tasks: During the web application development on the Node, you need to make multiple internal APIs calls to fetch data. Typically, you need to wait over another function to run or you require different middleware for each function. The other way possible is to run things in parallel using async.js -a feature of Node that allows multiple things to run simultaneously. You don't need to wait for one work to finish to start over another one. Just run all things together.

Avoid Synchronous Method

Node.js contains many synchronous components due to its single-threaded design and event-driven nature. Using synchronous operation can lock up the application as whole or block the main thread which in turn affect the performance severely. Besides, if you are using a third party library, it is possible that it also contains synchronous components that can affect performance result as well. So, to avoid this glitch, you can choose the asynchronous APIs.

Note: Remember that when you make a call to the third-party library, it should be asynchronous else you cannot revert to synchronous calls.

Using Gzip Compression

Gzip, as a software application, used by most of servers and clients that supports file compression and decompression. It will help developers carry out tasks faster as when the browser, gzip compatible browser, asks for resources, the response is compressed before sending the information to the browser. That turns out to be very easy and quick. It will automatically reduce time and latency.

Small and Lightweight Code

Performance of the app is integral, especially in terms of usability. Node is preferred only due to its fast nature. Therefore, the codebase has to be compact else it is going to make the development process slow, for no reason. Before you begin development process, you need to ask yourself if you really need certain module; use of the certain framework; if it can be useful to overhead and if there is any simpler way out to carry the task without following the complex one. Always look for an alternate way to make development simple, though it should not be compromised.

Consider not to Use Node.js to Render Static Render

Using standard web server such as Nginx to render the static assets can speed up the performance, instead of using Node.js. Following such process to render can significantly reduce loading time on the Node.js instance. More than that, the process will increase performance.

Client Side Rendering -A Way to Boost Performance

Making utilization of client-side rendering can be a good decision. Many powerful MVC frameworks such as AngularJS, React and Backbone.js are best client-side rendering that have made creating one-page apps absolutely easy. When you use React or Angular framework, they introduce APIs that does not send JSON response through the server, instead they send it directly to the client. Rendering on the server side with Node.js can make to critical as it will send back an HTML page as many time as you send the request. However, client-side rendering can save bandwidth and reduce latency.

In short, I have mentioned some of the questions which you can find in the middle of the article and that really you need to ask yourself before you start building the application. You can prepare more question and solve it and it will make dramatic changes for sure.