Even though only 12 years old, Node.js has emerged to be one of the most popular web development frameworks in the last decade. Built on Chrome’s V8 JavaScript engine, Node.js projects are easy to start. Being an asynchronous event-driven JavaScript-based runtime, Node.js is widely used for building lightweight and scalable network-driven applications. Node.js apps can be scaled-up easily in both directions- horizontal and vertical. Node.js apps are used for both client-side and server-side applications. It has an open-source JavaScript runtime environment/model which provides single module caching. Here we’ll see some of the best practices for Node.js development.
With these best practices, app automatically is able to minimize Javascript runtime errors and turn it to high performing, robust node.js apps and node processes. Knowing the important JavaScript concepts will help every Node.js programmer to develop a high performing Node.js app. You can know these javascript concepts at- 10 JavaScript concepts every Node.js programmer must master.
Node.js Best Practices To Follow In 2021-
1. Take A Layered Approach-
Node.js frameworks lets you to define route handlers as callback functions that are executed when a client request is received. With the amount of flexibility that these frameworks provide, it might be enticing to define all business logic directly inside those functions. If you start in this way, you’ll get to know that things can quickly escalate and before you know it, your petite server routes file can turn into a clunky, unwieldy and messy blob of code that is difficult to read, maintain and unit test. Hence it is good to implement the ‘separation of concerns’ programming principle. According to this, we should have different modules to address different concerns pertinent to our app. For server side apps, different modules should take the responsibility of catering to different aspects of processing a response for client request. Usually, this is likely to unfold as-
Client request, business logic + some database manipulation- returning the response. These aspects can be handled by programming three layers as shown below-
Controller layer-
In this module of code, API routes are defined. Here you define only your API routes. In route handler functions, you can deconstruct the request object, select the important data parts and send them to the service layer for processing.
Service layer-
Here business logic lives. It contains a set of classes and methods that take singular responsibility and are reusable. Service layer allows you to effectively decouple the processing logic from where the routes are defined.
Data Access Layer –
This layer can take up the responsibility of talking to database-fetching from, writing to and updating it. All SQL queries, database connections, models, ORM should be defined here.
Three layer setup serves as a reliable scaffolding for most Node.js apps, which makes your apps easy to code, maintain, debug and test.
2. Use npm For A New Project-
Npm init will generate a package.json file for project which shows all the packages/node apps of npm install has the information of your project.
$ mkdir demo-node app
$ cd demo-node app
$ npm init –yesNow, you have to specify an engine’s key with currently installed version of node (node -v):
"engines": {
"node": "10.3.16"
}3. Use Linting Packages-
There linting tools available, ESLint is one that most popular linting package that is used to check possible errors in code and also check code styles to meet best practices standards. It detects issues to any code patterns that could lead to any security threats and possible app-breaking that could occur in the future. There are some tools available that automatically format code and put it in a more readable way. It also resolves minor syntax errors like adding semicolons at the end of each statement etc.
Know the best Node.js packages to improve developer productivity at- 15 Essential Node.js Packages To Improve Developer Productivity.
4. Proper Naming Conventions For Constants, Variables, Functions, And Classes-
You should use all constants, functions, variables and class names in lowercase when we declare them. Also, you should not use any short forms rather than using only full forms that easily understandable by everyone using it. You should use underscore between two words.
Code Example-
//for class name we use Uppercase
class MyClassExample {}
// Use the const keyword and lowercase
const conf = {
Key: ‘value’
};
// for variables and functions names use lowercase
let variableExample = ‘value’;
function foo() {}5. Use Of Strict Equality Operator (===) –
Use strict equality operator === rather than weaker abstract equality operator = ==, == will convert two variables to a common type then compare them while === doesn’t type case variables, and ensures that both variables are of the same type and equal.
Example-
null == undefined //true
true == ‘true’ //false
False == undefined //false
“ == ‘0’ //false
False == ‘0’ //true
0 == ‘0’ //true
‘\t\r\n’ == 0 //true
0==” //true
False == null //falseAbove statements will return false when === is used.
