Best 8 Tips and Techniques to Speed up Your Node.js Application

Node js is a cross-platform Javascript runtime environment that is useful for both servers and desktop applications. Node.Js is built on chrome’s javascript. It has the best runtime that is suitable for making fast scalable network applications. It uses an event-driven non-blocking input/output model that makes it lightweight,  efficient, and perfect for its data-intensive real-time applications that run across distributed devices.

Node Js offers many benefits including low memory usage, good performance and a large ecosystem of packages currently number above four hundred and seventy-five thousand. 

Well, there are millions of other reasons why node js are such amazing and a famous platform among the community. However, as the more effective and amazing looking technology it comes with a catch of being one of the hardest to learn and master.

There are certain problems that you might face while building your node js application like syntactical errors, logical errors, runtime, efficiency, etc. One of the most common issues with node.js application development is the speed of your application. Node js indeed allows you to create quite dynamic, and amazing web applications, servers, and networks, but a lot of functionalities and bad code might slow down your application. Don’t worry as we bring to you the best 8 tips and techniques to speed up your node js application. 

Avoid Unnecessary Code 

You need to avoid writing code again and again for functionalities that are repeated several times in your node js applications. If you are still doing it that will make your application slower and it is also considered a bad practice in terms of standards of programming. For instance, for reinventing the wheel we recommend the use of existing NPM packages when they apply to your project. 

Run in Parallel 

There are instances where you need to make multiple calls to fetch various data. For instance, think about a user dashboard. To render a single dashboard you need to call at least these 4 basic functions (given that you are at least implementing these functions) – 

• User Profile –  get user profile()
• Recent Activity – getRecentActivity()
• Subscriptions – get subscriptions()
• Notifications –  get notifications()

However, these calls can be simply avoided by creating middleware for each of these functions that run in parallel to each other. 

Go Asynchronous 

Unless you are writing CLI commands you probably would want your application to be responsive while performing longer running operations such as reads and writes. However, by default node js is a single-threaded framework meaning at any instance there is only a single thread in action as synchronous code might look up your application. But you can choose to write asynchronous code as synchronously as possible. After all most, node web servers and taps which are intently multiuser put all your required statements at the top of the file. 

Use NPMS.IO To Find Packages 

Unfortunately, the standard site for searching the npm packages does not work that efficiently and it might waste your time unnecessarily. So its better for NPMS.IO to screen packages for security stability, quality, and current maintenance. 

Awesome-NODE.JS 

There are many curated lists of NPM packages and resources out there that you can use. But if you are confused about the packages to use you can simply visit node.cool which provides you with a list of awesome and useful NPM packages. 

Keep Your Code Simple 

It is said that the simpler the code the easier it is to manatin and less are the chances of errors. There are no points for being clever and you will be amazed to know that some of the most useful NPM packages and modules consist of just three lines of code.

Keep Your Required Statements At The Top Of The File 

Since the node js applications are synchronous in nature and will block the code execution will they don’t find the required files at the top? It’s better to block once on load then the program randomly while it is running. 

Restart Your Production Server Automatically 

There will be a number of chances where your server will crash and wasting your time manually restarting your production server will just waste your time and make your application a bit lousy. So, it is better to automate this process. 

Author Bio –

Hermit Chawla is a MD at AIS Technolabs which is  Web Design and Web development Company, helping global businesses to grow. He love to share his thoughts on node.js app development.