Microservices With Node.js: Scalable, Superior, and Secure Apps

Microservices are becoming increasingly popular.

Organizations that are using it, can see tangible benefits and improved performance. The idea of sustainability and pace of innovation requires a stable and secure tech stack for your business applications. Microservice and Node.js is one such tech stack that enables modern-day organizations to achieve agility, security, scalability, and superior performance.

Microservices or Microservice Architecture is a software design pattern (style) which breaks the entire system into smaller, independent, and functional units, each of them is capable to run and scale independently. This concept is widely used by world-famous organizations including Uber, Netflix, Amazon, eBay, Groupon, and many more.

Embracing microservices certainly bring more business value but at the same time, it requires a stable and secure technology such as Node.js to develop apps without complexities.

The goal of this post:

• To help you understand what microservice and Node.js is.
• The connection between node.js and microservice.
• Benefits of using Node.js and Microservice.
• Why Node.js is a good choice for microservices.

Let’s get started!

What Is Microservice Architecture?

Microservice enables developers to develop software in small pieces.

One of the significant features of microservices is, every part (unit) of the application can be written in different programming languages by different teams.

According to one IDC report,

By 2022, 90% of all apps will feature microservices architectures that improve the ability to design, debug, update, and leverage third-party code.

This approach is very useful for the larger teams as they can update, scale and test microservice separately.

The main idea behind Microservices is to create small, functional pieces of an application, which is contradicted to the traditional, monolithic approach where an application is developed as a whole. Here is how it looks:

Microservices help organizations to unlock agility and help them achieve faster improvements than the traditional development pattern.

This technique is not new; it’s a form of Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) which deals with independent products, technologies, and vendors, communicating with each other over a network.

What Is Node.Js?

Node.js is an asynchronous event-driven JavaScript runtime to build highly-scalable applications.

With Node.js, JavaScript entered into server-side scripting which is revolutionary in itself as JavaScript was popular for client-side scripting.

Due to incredibly faster performance and ability to handle concurrent requests, several tech giants are using Node.js in their environments across the globe including Netflix, LinkedIn, Trello, Uber, PayPal, Medium, eBay, NASA, and many more.

Connection Between Microservice and Node.js

The connection between microservice and node.js is very strong.

Node.js is designed to build highly-scalable apps easier through non-blocking I/O and event-driven model that makes it suitable for data-centric and real-time apps.

Node.js is highly suitable for real-time collaboration tools, streaming and networking apps, and data-intensive applications.

Microservices, on the other hand, makes it easy for the developer to create smaller services that are scalable, independent, loosely coupled, and very suitable for complex, large enterprise applications.

The nature and goal of both these concepts are identical at the core, making both suitable for each other. Together used, they can power highly-scalable applications and handle thousands of concurrent requests without slowing down the system.

Microservices and Node.js have given rise to culture like DevOps where frequent and faster deliveries are of more value than the traditional long development cycle. Microservices are closely associated with container orchestration, or we can say that Microservices are managed by container platform, offering a modern way to design, develop, and deploy software.

What Are The Benefits Using Microservices and Node.Js?

Building an application requires not only powerful technology, but a sound business idea, modern architecture, and a well-defined strategy to create a successful application.

By using modern software development techniques and technologies like Microservice and Node.js in app development, you will be able to see several clear advantages and those benefits are mentioned below:

Hassle-Free Development Of Complex Applications

Large-scale systems are complex and difficult to analyze, conceptualize, develop, and maintain. When you split the system into smaller, independent units with microservice, it would be incredibly easy to update, deploy, and maintain. Also, it reduces your time and cost as you have to update only one specific component based on the needs.

Build Well-Structured Apps

With Node.js and the use of microservice, it will be easier to design new features and implement changes in the current architecture. Microservices are easily deployable, and that too more frequently, enabling developers to concentrate more on coding and development standards rather than architectural issues.

Performance and Scalability

As both, node.js and microservices are known for building highly-scalable apps, you can easily scale up the small component with fewer resources. Exceptional performance and scale-when-you-need allow developers community to achieve more with less.

Code-Reusability

Node.js uses APIs and modern databases which facilitate building complex apps without taking years of effort. Also, there are thousands of open-source libraries from the open-source community that accelerate app development. With unified JavaScript development stack, Node.js allows reuse of the code between client-side and server-side.

Easier Updates and Maintenance

Node.js offers a modular approach to applications, enabling developers to leverage microservice architecture which results in smoother, easier, and incremental updates.

Along with that, maintaining the system would be trouble-free for developers because of loosely-coupled and independent services.

Cost-Effectiveness and Faster Time-To-Market

Node.js is well suited for microservice architecture, allowing developers to build individual components, which seamlessly fit into a continuous delivery pipeline to accelerate the time-to-market of an app.

It lets you scale what’s needed, saving unnecessary hours and efforts, ultimately resulting in saving money.

Business-Centric Apps

Since microservice architecture is split into ‘smaller’ components across the business domain, it increases the collaboration and understanding across the teams. Also, adding new features into microservice would be much easier for the developers than adding to traditional monolithic development patterns.

Easy learning curve due to JavaScript, the flexibility of Node.js, scalability, and ease of development in microservices will benefit businesses and help developers make business-centric apps that are in line with business objectives.

Node.js Is Good Choice For Microservices Because It Offers:

• Superior performance.
• Faster execution.
• Cost-effective and scalable.
• Easy to maintain and update.
• Simplified, modular development.
• API support.
• Wider community support.
• Easily available frameworks.
• Easy learning curve.

Microservice And Node.js Go Hand In Hand: Key Takeaway

It seems like Microservice and Node.js are built for each other because they are closely connected.

The fundamental goal of both (one is technique, other is runtime environment) is the same – to make scalable apps faster and thus, saving time and cost.

World’s tech giants are already enjoying great benefits by using this powerful combination. Microservices provide ‘smaller apps’ environment that can be easily scalable while Node.js facilitate complex web app development with unified development, APIs, and single-threaded asynchronous I/O structure.

Node.js and Microservices befit highly-scalable, heavy-traffic, data-sensitive, and real-time complex applications which would become hard in another traditional approach.

Do you want to use microservice architecture in your next app?

Further Reading

Node.js Tutorial for Beginners (Part 1): Intro to Node and Express

A Look Into Node.js