Express.js

Some platforms have an overwhelming number of options for web frameworks. Node.js, the event-driven server-side JavaScript environment, is one such platform. Whether it's the minimalist Express or the full-blown MVC web framework Sails.js, Node.js seems to have it all. In this article, Toptal Freelance Software Engineer Chuoxian Yang explores four of the most popular Node.js web frameworks and discusses how each framework stands out from the rest of the crowd in Node.js.

While Ruby has Rails and Python has Django, the dominant application development framework for Node has yet to be established. But, there is a powerful contender gaining steam: LoopBack, an open source API framework built by StrongLoop, the creators of Express. Let's take a closer look at LoopBack and it's capabilities by turning everything into practice and building an example application.

Node.js shines in real-time web apps that employ push technology over WebSocket. Node's real-time, two-way connections---where the client and server can each initiate communication---enable the freer exchange of data.

After much thought, I decided to engineer a solution to the idea abandonment problem. I call it the ‘Init' project (or Init.js). The core of the idea is to have a single project to start them all, to let the developer or the technical founder make all of the essential decisions at once, and receive an appropriate starting template based on those decisions.