With the emergence of Node.js, building highly robust and intuitive websites in JavaScript has become simple and cost-effective than ever. The innovative and feature-rich framework has brought radical changes in web application development, replacing conventional web sockets with advanced push innovation.
Furthermore, applications built on Node.js are lightweight and fast loading irrespective of a high concentration of information. The framework also helps to automate the tasks, which would otherwise be extremely cumbersome.
This article lists the useful tools that I have learned from good node.js books and my development experience on various projects.
Here are the top Node.js tools for effective web application development.
Top Tools for Node.js Developers
Stylus
It is a highly robust and revolutionary CSS language that is power-packed with smart features and particularly built for the Node.js framework. Every logical operation is expressive and very easy to use which makes it a top Node.js tool for developers. The syntax is very flexible and minimal as compared to other tools.
Express.js
It is one of the most important tools for Node.js and is most effective for creating a host of mobile and web applications, and APIs. It offers a gamut of features like simplified multiple routing, template engines, database integration and others to power popular applications and websites.
Nightwatch.js
It is a user-friendly end-to-end Node.js based testing solution that is best for browser-based apps and websites. It harnesses Selenium WebDriver API to perform a range of assertions and commands on the DOM element.
Hapi.js
It is a powerful Node.js framework that is used to build application program interfaces (APIs) and software applications. It is a highly robust plug-in system and has numerous features like implement caching, configuration-based functionality, input validation, error handling, logging, etc. It enables developers to focus on writing reusable application logic rather than spending time building infrastructure.
Socket.io
The cross-browser web socket is most effective in building real-time apps across all mobile devices and browsers. It is one of the fastest and most reliable real-time engines. The advantages of this library are streamlined API, better debugging, scalability, high integration, CDN deliveries, and binary support.
Cylon.js
This powerful JavaScript framework is the ideal choice for physical computing, robotics, and the Internet of Things. It makes it remarkably easy to send commands to robots and devices.
Math.js
It is a vast math library for JavaScript and Node.js and is extremely powerful and easy to use. It provides an integrated solution to work with big numbers, numbers, complex numbers, matrices, and units. It is easily extensible and supports chained operations.
Jade
It is one of the most popular template engines and resources for Node.js. It is typically built for server-side templating in Node.js, but can also be used in other environments. Jade is designed only to create XML-like documents.
Mojito
The JavaScript framework is based on Yahoo! Cocktails and is a mobile development platform and MVC framework that offer a range of features like easy data fetching, integrated unit testing, local development tools, and a library for localization and internationalization.
Sails.js
It is a powerful Node.js framework and comprises of all features needed to create anything from a simple chat client to a large-scale enterprise web application. It works on the Express framework to handle sockets and HTTP requests. It is a front-end agnostic framework that gives you the flexibility to choose the right technology to build front-end.
Meteor
With this effective JavaScript app platform, you can seamlessly build applications that are faster and easy to use than you ever thought before. Everything works seamlessly on this Node.js tool, right from database access to server business logic to rendering to the client.
Eskimo
Eskimo makes it simpler to build Node.js apps, APIs and online stores more rapidly than ever. It can be used for literally everything – referral systems, coming soon pages, CDN hosted assets and others. Simple commands and options are bundled with the CLI, making an app or web development easier and fast.
Pomelo
Pomelo is a fast, highly scalable and distributed game server framework for Node.js that comes with numerous tools and libraries, and provides Open Source game demo in HTML5. It offers a scalable architecture for a game, easy to use framework and API, all bundled into one to improve performance. It can help to extend severs and handle response/request, RPC, and broadcast with minimal codes.
Broccoli.js
It serves as the asset pipeline to build highly robust and ambitious applications on Node.js. Broccoli.js is super fast, highly flexible and needs less coding to build your assets. In fact, Broccoli is just JavaScript!
Koa.js
The new web framework for Node.js is designed to build smaller yet more robust and expressive web applications and APIs. It offers an entire suite of methods and tools to make writing servers faster and enjoyable.
Vows.js
Vows.js is a behavior-driven development framework for Node.js that is designed to test asynchronous code. This framework prioritizes clarity, speed of execution and user experience.
PencilBlue
It is an Open Source content management system for Node.js that is completely scalable and fully responsive. It is easy to use, extendable and is the best option for everything and not just blogs.
Set
It is an unobtrusive, dry template engine for Node.js that renders 100% valid HTML5 templates. It is visual, and therefore, designing in your favorite visual editor becomes simple. You can even use mock data in templates.
NodeOS
It is the first operating system that is powered by npm and is developed on top of Linux Kernel with Node.js run-time. It uses npm as its core package manager, and is open and easy to contribute to.
Node JS Logging Tool
Analyzing the distributed server logs can be really cumbersome on node.js servers. This is a logging tool that can aggregate and help analyze the logs on node servers.
Taunus
Taunus is a micro-isomorphic MVC engine for Node.js that is focused on delivering an enhanced experience to the end-users. It uses server-side rendering to deliver content to the end-users.
Conclusion
Despite its amazing features and key functionalities, Node.js is a new framework that needs the above-mentioned tools to build highly robust and interactive web and mobile applications. These tools help the developers harness the full potential of Node.js, designing and implementing beautiful applications. Furthermore, the tools make coding and writing application logic-less complex and simple. The user-friendly and intuitive Node.js tools also help in error handling, input validation, logging, and other functionalities, making application development seamless than before.
Article Updates
- Article Updated on Dec 2019: Minor fixes and link updated.
Mehul Rajput is a CEO of Mindinventory, a prominent web development and mobile app development company specialized in Node.JS Development. Delivering best solutions to its local and global clients it leads to better business all around.