node.js: Javascript's in your backend

node.js
JavaScript’s in your backend

David Padbury
http://davidpadbury.com
@davidpadbury

static void Main()
{
int result = Add(2, 2);
Console.WriteLine("2+2 = {0}", result);
}

static int Add(int n1, int n2)
{
return n1 + n2;
}

static void Main()
{
string name = GetName();
Console.WriteLine("Hi {0}", name);
}

static string GetName()
{
return Console.ReadLine();
}

static void Main() Normal Method Call
{
int result = Add(2, 2);
Console.WriteLine("2+2 = {0}", result);
}

static int Add(int n1, int n2)
{
return n1 + n2;
}
Does some stuff in processor cache or RAM

static void Main() Normal Method Call
{
string name = GetName();
Console.WriteLine("Hi {0}", name);
}

static string GetName()
{
return Console.ReadLine();
}
Blocks until ready

What’s the big deal?

Well, let’s think about what we do in a web server...

public ActionResult View(int id)
{
var product = northwindDataContext.Get(id);

return View(product);
}

Blocking Network Call (IO)

Think about what we really do on a web server...

Call Databases
Grab Files

Think about what we really do on a web server...

Pull from caches

Wait on other connections

CPU Cycles

L1 3

L2 14

RAM 250

Disk 41,000,000

Network 240,000,000

0 75,000,000 150,000,000 225,000,000 300,000,000

http://nodejs.org/jsconf.pdf

Comparatively,
I/O pretty
much takes
forever...

And yet, we write code exactly the same.

“we’re doing it wrong”
- Ryan Dahl, node.js creator

http://www.yuiblog.com/blog/2010/05/20/video-dahl/

So I can guess what you’re thinking,
“What about multi-threading?”

Yep, mainstream web servers like Apache and IIS* use a

Thread Per Connection

* Well, technically IIS doesn’t quite have a thread per connection as there’s some kernel level stuff which will talk to IIS/
ASP.NET depending on your conﬁguration and it’s all quite complicated. But for the sake of this presentation we’ll say
it’s a thread per connection as it’s pretty darn close in all practical terms.
If you’d like to talk about this more feel free to chat to me afterwards, I love spending my spare time talking about
threading in IIS.
HONEST.

Threading ain’t free

Context Switching Execution Stacks take Memory

An Event Loop

Use a single thread - do little pieces of work, and do ‘em quickly

With an event loop, you ask it
to do something and it’ll get
back to you when it’s done

nginx is event based

(higher is better)
http://blog.webfaction.com/a-little-holiday-present

(lower is better)
http://blog.webfaction.com/a-little-holiday-present

Being event based is actually a pretty good
way of writing heavily I/O bound servers

We’d have to completely change how we write code

public ActionResult View(int id)
{
var product = northwindDataContext.Get(id);

return View(product);
Blocking Call
}

To something where we could easily write non-blocking code
public void View(HttpResponse response, int id)
{ Non-blocking Call
northwindDataContext.Get(id, (product) => {
response.View(product);
});
}
Anonymous Function
Callback

C
Most old school languages can’t do this

Even if we had a language that made
writing callbacks easy (like C#), we’d need
a platform that had minimal to no
blocking I/O operations.

If only we had a language which was designed to
be inherently single threaded, had ﬁrst class
functions and closures built in, and had no
preconceived notions about I/O?

Wouldn’t it also be really handy if half* of the
developers in the world already knew it?

(you can probably guess where this is going...)

*The guy speaking completely made that up for the sake of this slide. but he’s pretty sure there are quite a few

node.js: Javascript's in your backend

http://nodejs.org/

Node.js is a set of JavaScript bindings for
writing high-performance network servers

With the goal of making developing high-
performance network servers easy

Built on Google’s
V8 js engine
(so it’s super quick)

Exposes only non-blocking I/O API’s

Stops us writing code that
behaves badly

console.log('Hello');

setTimeout(function() {
console.log('World');
}, 2000);

Prints Immediately $node app.js
Hello
Waits two seconds
World
$ Exits as there’s nothing left to do

Node comes with a large set of libraries

Node comes with a large set of libraries

Timers Processes Events Buffers

Streams Crypto File System REPL

Net HTTP HTTPS TLS/SSL

DNS UDP/Datagram

Libraries are ‘imported’ using the require function

Just a function call

var http = require('http'),
fs = require('fs');

Returns object exposing the API

Demo
Require and standard modules

Every request is just a callback
var http = require('http');

var server = http.createServer(function(req, res) {

res.writeHead(200, { 'Content-Type': 'text/plain' });
res.end('Hello from node.js!');
});

server.listen(3000);
console.log('Server started on 3000');

Node libraries are structured as
CommonJS modules

http://www.commonjs.org/specs/modules/1.0/

Libraries are evaluated in their own context

Only way to share API is to attach to exports

require function returns exports

/* people.js */

function Person(name) {
this.name = name;
}

Person.prototype = {
sayHi: function() {
console.log("Hi, I'm " + this.name);
}
} Attaching API to exports

exports.createPerson = function(name) {
return new Person(name);
};

exports from module are returned

var people = require('./people'); File path

var barry = people.createPerson('Barry');

barry.sayHi(); // Hi, I'm Barry

console.log( typeof Person ); // undefined

Internals of module don’t exist in this context

Despite being a relatively new runtime,
there are a massive number of open source libraries available

Ofﬁcial list alone has 718 released modules
https://github.com/ry/node/wiki/modules

(as of Feb 2011)

Modules for just about everything you could think of,
•Web Application Servers
•Static File Servers
•Web Middleware
•Database (couchdb, mongodb, mysql, postgres, sqlite, etc..)
•Templating
•Build & Production
•Security
•SMTP
•TCP/IP
•Web Services
•Message Queues
•Testing
•XML
•Command Line Parsers
•Parser Generators
•Debugging tools
•Compression
•Graphics
•Payment Gateways
•Clients for many public API’s (facebook, ﬂickr, last.fm, twitter, etc...)
•Internationalization

and probably a lot for things you’ve never heard of

So you can just pull them down and reference
them on their ﬁles.

However once libraries start depending on
other libraries, and we start installing quite a few,

Well, we know how this ends up...

Established platforms have tools to help with this

Node is no different

npm is a package manager for
node. You can use it to
install and publish your
node programs. It manages
dependencies and does other
cool stuff.
http://npmjs.org/

Module details and dependencies are expressed
in CommonJS standard package.json

http://wiki.commonjs.org/wiki/Packages/1.0

{
"name" : "vows",
"description" : "Asynchronous BDD & continuous
integration for node.js",
"url" : "http://vowsjs.org",
"keywords" : ["testing", "spec", "test", "BDD"],
"author" : "Alexis Sellier <self@cloudhead.net>",
"contributors" : [],
"dependencies" : {"eyes": ">=0.1.6"},
"main" : "./lib/vows",
"bin" : { "vows": "./bin/vows" },
"directories" : { "test": "./test" },
"version" : "0.5.6",
"engines" : {"node": ">=0.2.6"}
}

https://github.com/cloudhead/vows/

Okay.

So node’s a nice idea in theory and there’s enough there to be
compared to other established platforms.

But where does it rock?

In my mind, there are two major challenges
facing the next generation of web applications.

Most web application platforms struggle, or at
least don’t much help with these challenges

Although it’s nice to think about writing applications
for just new versions of Chrome, Firefox and IE9.

We should strive to get our applications working
everywhere*.

*to at least some degree

And I’m not just talking about

With traditional web applications
there are two distinct sides

Client Server

With node.js both sides speak the same
language making it easier to work together

The server can help the
browser ﬁll out functionality
that it’s missing

Demo
jQuery on the Server using jsdom

var jsdom = require('jsdom'),
window = jsdom.jsdom().createWindow(),
document = window.document,
htmlEl = document.getElementsByTagName('html')[0];

jsdom.jQueryify(window, function() {
var $ = window.jQuery;

$('<div />').addClass('servermade').appendTo('body');

$('.servermade').text('And selectors work fine!');

console.log( htmlEl.outerHTML );
});

Demo
Sharing code between Server and Client

HTTP

Request

Client Server
Response

Not so good for pushing

Client Server
Update. Erm....
Fail

Web Sockets

Proper Duplex Communication!

But it’s only in very recent browsers

And due to protocol concerns it’s now disabled even in recent browsers

But you’ve probably noticed that
applications have been doing this for years

We’ve got some pretty sophisticated
methods of emulating it, even in IE

WebSockets

Silverlight / Flash

IE HTML Document ActiveX

AJAX Long Polling

AJAX multipart streaming

Forever IFrame

JSONP Polling

All of those require a server holding open a
connection for as long as possible.

Thread-per-connection web
servers struggle with this

Node.js doesn’t even break a sweat

var socket = io.listen(server);
socket.on('connection', function(client){
// new client is here!
client.on('message', function(){ … })
client.on('disconnect', function(){ … })
});

Demo
Real-time web using socket.io

var socket = io.listen(server),
counter = 0;

socket.on('connection', function(client) {
No multithreading, so no
counter = counter + 1; race condition!
socket.broadcast(counter);

client.on('disconnect', function() {
counter = counter - 1;
socket.broadcast(counter);
});

});

Node.js is young, but it’s
growing up fast

So how do you get started with node?

If you’re on Mac or Linux then you’re good to go

If you’re on Windows
you’re going to be a little
disappointed

Currently the best way to get start on Windows is
hosting inside a Linux VM and ssh’ing it.
http://www.lazycoder.com/weblog/2010/03/18/getting-started-with-node-js-on-windows/

Proper Windows support will be coming soon.

http://nodejs.org/v0.4_announcement.html

I think that node is super exciting and that you
should start experimenting with it today

But even if you don’t, other Web
Frameworks are watching and it will
almost certainly inﬂuence them


http://groups.google.com/group/nodejs

#nodejs on freenode.net

http://howtonode.org/

https://github.com/alexyoung/nodepad

// Thanks for listening!

return;

Image Attributions
Old man exmouth market, Daniel2005 - http://www.flickr.com/photos/loshak/530449376/
needle, Robert Parviainen - http://www.flickr.com/photos/rtv/256102280/
Skeptical, Gabi in Austin - http://www.flickr.com/photos/gabrielleinaustin/2454197457/
Javascript!=Woo(), Aaron Cole - http://www.flickr.com/photos/awcole72/1936225899/
Day 22 - V8 Kompressor, Fred - http://www.flickr.com/photos/freeed/5379562284/
The Finger, G Clement - http://www.flickr.com/photos/illumiquest/2749137895/
A Messy Tangle of Wires, Adam - http://www.flickr.com/photos/mr-numb/4753899767/
7-365 I am ready to pull my hair out..., Bram Cymet - http://www.flickr.com/photos/bcymet/3292063588/
Epic battle, Roger Mateo Poquet - http://www.flickr.com/photos/el_momento_i_sitio_apropiados/5166623452/
World's Tiniest, Angelina :) - http://www.flickr.com/photos/angelinawb/266143527/
A Helping Hand, Jerry Wong - http://www.flickr.com/photos/wongjunhao/4285302488/
[108/365] Ill-advised, Pascal - http://www.flickr.com/photos/pasukaru76/5268559005/
Gymnastics Artistic, Alan Chia - http://www.flickr.com/photos/seven13avenue/2758702332/
metal, Marc Brubaker - http://www.flickr.com/photos/hometownzero/136283072/
Quiet, or You'll see Father Christmas again, theirhistory - http://www.flickr.com/photos/
22326055@N06/3444756625/
Day 099, kylesteed - http://www.flickr.com/photos/kylesteeddesign/4507065826/
Spectators in the grandstand at the Royal Adelaide Show, State Library of South Australia - http://
www.flickr.com/photos/state_library_south_australia/3925493310/

node.js: Javascript's in your backend

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