Introduction

Building real-world applications in the JavaScript language requires dynamic programming, where the size of the JavaScript application grows uncontrollably. New features and updates get released, and you need to fix bugs to maintain the code.

To execute this, new developers need to be added to the project, which becomes complicated. The structure of modules and packages is unable to downsize and simplify the application. To run the application smoothly, it is essential to convert the large, homogeneous structure into small, independent pieces of programs. Such complexities can be resolved effortlessly when JavaScript applications are built on microservices, more so with the Node.js ecosystem.

Understanding Microservices and Node.js

What are microservices?

In software application development, microservices are a style of **service-oriented architecture **(SOA) where the app is structured on an assembly of interconnected services. With microservices, the application architecture is built with lightweight protocols. The services are finely seeded in the architecture. Microservices disintegrate the app into smaller services and enable improved modularity.

Compared to its predecessor, the monolithic architecture, microservices are hands down more beneficial. You don’t need to stuff all software components and services in one big container and pack them tightly. With microservices, you can build an app with:

• greater flexibility,
• high scalability,
• continuous development,
• systematic data organization,
• time optimization, and
• reliability.

Building JavaScript applications on microservices help you focus on developing monofunctional modules with clearly defined operations and precise interfaces. The application development process becomes more agile, and the challenges of continuous testing are mitigated.

When you build applications on a monolithic architecture, the entire application needs to be deployed with every update. On the other hand, microservices have no dependency on the type of framework, technique or programming language being used to build them. Your ability to release REST-ful APIs for communication and other services is the only requisite for microservice architecture.

**The Node.js Platform **

When it comes to building JavaScript microservices, a majority of developers prefer the Node.js platform. In a JavaScript engine, Node.js is a cross-platform, open-source runtime environment (RTE) used for building networking and server-side applications. Written in JavaScript, Node.js is executed on Microsoft Windows, OS X, and Linux operating systems within the Node.js runtime.

Reasons for using Node.js for building microservices

A rich database of multiple JavaScript modules provided by Node.js simplifies the application development at a great scale. Software architects prefer Node.js as a technology partner for developing JSON API-based applications, I/O bound applications, data streaming applications, single-page applications, and data-intensive real-time applications.

Key benefits of Node.js

• Single-threaded: With event looping, the server uses a non-blocking mechanism to respond.
• Super-fast: Codes are executed quickly on the V8 JavaScript Engine
• Event-driven: ‘Events of Node.js’ is a notification system that enables the application server to capture the response of the previous API call.
• Buffer-less: There is no buffering as data is simply released in chunks.
• Asynchronous: The non-blocking, non-synchronous Node.js libraries move to the next API and do not await the return data of the previous API.
• Highly-scalable: Servers can handle as many requests as coming their way
• Licensed: The program is authorized under a software license.

Microsoft, PayPal, Uber, eBay, and Yammer are leading companies actively using Node.js application development for their projects.

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