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I wanna understand the extent of node js?

Is it used only for mobile web apps to handle server side or can it be used to develop a full fledged web app for all device configuration(like replacing ruby and rails). I found some examples but all seems to be mobile web apps.

Is it like companies like Aibnb, Linkeddin... etc developed two sites, one with nodejs as backend and other with ruby and rails and depending on the device they route to that site. Please give me some favourable inputs so that my confusion can be calmed.

prajnavantha
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Node.js is not just for mobile apps. This question How to decide when to use Node.js? gives a good analysis of when to use nodejs.

But, to sum up a bit:

  • Node is good when you have a lot of short lived requests that don't require heavy CPU processing.

  • Node is good if you want to use all javascript

  • One disadvantage with node is that there are a lot of javascript packages that do similar things - the environment isn't as mature or as standardized as other languages (maybe this isn't a negative to you though)

Mobile applications often lend themselves to using node because they often follow the pattern of many short lived requests, e.g. look up something from a database.

There are tradeoffs, such as as that you will be using a fully dynamic language across your entire stack (not for the weak at heart).

So to recap, node is not just for mobile apps, but you should do some research to understand why you might use node.

Community
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Jeff Storey
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Node can be used to produce many more solutions than just providing for mobile devices. Some solutions include command line tools (ex. Grunt), applications (ex. crawler), web services (ex. RESTful services), and full-fledged web sites (ex. hummingbird). Lastly if you want an example framework for constructing standard HTML (desktop or otherwise) web apps in node, see Jade.

As to which framework a company chooses often there are several APIs provided. As their web services communicate with standard XML or JSON documents, communication between servers doesn't necessary need to be written in the same language.

ledlogic
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