Node.js is a platform built on Chrome’s JavaScript runtime for easily building fast, scalable network applications. Node.js uses an event-driven, non-blocking I/O model that makes it lightweight and efficient, suitable for data-intensive real-time applications that run across distributed devices.
Unlike other popular web servers, Node.js is mainly a cross-platform runtime environment to build scalable network applications. It executes JavaScript code outside of a browser.
Node.js has a built-in module called HTTP, which allows Node.js to transfer data over the Hyper Text Transfer Protocol (HTTP).
The HTTP interfaces in Node.js are designed to support many features of the protocol which have been traditionally difficult to use. In particular, large, possibly chunk-encoded, messages. The interface is careful to never buffer entire requests or responses, so the user is able to stream data.
Website: nodejs.org
Support: Documentation, GitHub Code Repository
Developer: Various
License: MIT license
Node.js is written in JavaScript, C++, and Python. Learn JavaScript with our recommended free books and free tutorials. Learn C++ with our recommended free books and free tutorials. Learn Python with our recommended free books and free tutorials.
Related Software
| JavaScript Runtime Environments | |
|---|---|
| Node.js | Hugely popular cross-platform JavaScript run-time environment |
| Bun | Fast JavaScript runtime designed as a drop-in replacement for Node.js. |
| Deno | Simple, modern and secure runtime for JavaScript and TypeScript that uses V8 |
| WasmEdge | High-performance, and extensible WebAssembly runtime |
| txiki.js | Small and powerful JavaScript runtime |
| JerryScript | JavaScript engine for the Internet of Things |
| Window.js | JavaScript runtime for desktop graphics programming |
| Blueboat | Multi-tenant serverless JavaScript runtime |
| lo | Successor project to Just |
| Just | Very small v8 JavaScript runtime |
Read our verdict in the software roundup.
| Web Servers | |
|---|---|
| nginx | Very powerful and efficient web server powering the top web sites |
| Apache | Like nginx, Apache is a hugely popular web server |
| Caddy | Powerful, enterprise-ready web server written in Go |
| Lwan | Experimental, scalable, high performance HTTP server |
| H2O | Optimized HTTP/1.x, HTTP/2, HTTP/3 server |
| lighttpd | Fast, compliant and very flexible low memory footprint web server |
| Ferron | Web server optimized for speed, security and efficiency |
| Angie | Scalable web server that was forked from nginx |
| Algernon | Small self-contained pure-Go web server |
| Node.js | Server-side JavaScript environment for network applications |
| Hiawatha | Web server that focuses on security |
| OpenLiteSpeed | Lightweight HTTP server |
| rwasa | Full-featured high performance web server |
| devd | Local web server for developers |
| Cherokee | Fast, flexible and embeddable web server |
Read our verdict in the software roundup.
 Explore our comprehensive directory of recommended free and open source software. Our carefully curated collection spans every major software category.This directory is part of our ongoing series of informative articles for Linux enthusiasts. It features hundreds of detailed reviews, along with open source alternatives to proprietary solutions from major corporations such as Google, Microsoft, Apple, Adobe, IBM, Cisco, Oracle, and Autodesk. You’ll also find interesting projects to try, hardware coverage, free programming books and tutorials, and much more. Know a useful open source Linux program that we haven’t covered yet? Let us know by completing this form. |