Best Way to Learn Node.js - A Complete Roadmap - GeeksforGeeks (2024)

NodeJS, released by Ryan Dahl in 2009, unexpectedly gained immense popularity within a decade. It has become a top choice for small to large enterprises in building backend services. Today, NodeJS is considered an essential skill for developers due to its widespread use and popularity.

NodeJS is a hot technology globally, particularly in Silicon Valley, providing developers with excellent career prospects. Its versatility enables the creation of various applications, and major companies like PayPal, LinkedIn, Uber, Yahoo, Medium, GoDaddy, Groupon, and Walmart have adopted NodeJS in their tech stack. Discover why NodeJS is popular, then start by learning foundational concepts, asynchronous programming, and key modules. Dive into frameworks like Express.js through online tutorials for a structured roadmap to becoming a proficient NodeJS developer.

Why NodeJS? (Decide Your End Goal)?

Define your goal before starting with NodeJS. Whether it’s web applications, entrepreneurship, job prospects, chat apps, or online games, clarity is crucial. Avoid the common mistake of learning aimlessly; focus on real-world applications. Explore different fields in NodeJS, identify your interest, and proceed to the next step: finding resources.

How to Learn NodeJS?

To learn NodeJS the most important thing you should know is JavaScript. Don’t make the mistake to learn Node until or unless you do not have a good command of JavaScript. Whatever you will be building with NodeJS, you will be using a lot of JavaScript concepts. If you’re interested in knowing the path of learning JavaScript then check the link How to Become a JavaScript Developer? Once you have a good command of JavaScript move to NodeJS and find the resources for it.

• Basics: Start with understanding JavaScript syntax, data types, variables, operators, and control flow.
• Functions: Dive deeper into functions, scope, closures, and the concept of this.
• Asynchronous JavaScript: Grasp asynchronous programming concepts such as callbacks, promises, and async/await, as they form the foundation of Node.js development.

Learning Resources

For beginners, the online learning options can be overwhelming. Take it slow, stay patient, and explore gradually. Code along with your chosen resource, as hands-on practice is key. Building applications on your own is crucial for effective learning.

Check out the official documentation and learn the various concepts of NodeJS in detail. You can also visit the link NodeJS Tutorial GeeksforGeeks. You can also go for some online video tutorials or courses but in most of the courses, different instructors may cover different concepts of NodeJS. This can be overwhelming for you and it can create confusion as well. So it’s important to know the clear path or roadmap to learn NodeJS.

Next, we’ll cover the roadmap to guide your learning progression. Consider your programming background and JavaScript knowledge for an effective learning curve. After formal learning, delve into independent exploration by building diverse applications with NodeJS on various platforms.

Roadmap to Learn NodeJS

1. Introduction to NodeJS

Begin with NodeJS basics: its definition, applications, features, and why companies favor it. 7 Famous Apps Built on NodeJS: Reasons and Benefits for insights. Understand why NodeJS is chosen for server-side development and its advantages, limitations, and deployment servers. NodeJS is a server-side JavaScript runtime built on Chrome’s V8 engine, offering efficiency through native machine code compilation. It’s cross-platform, event-driven, and non-blocking, making it ideal for fast, reliable, scalable web applications and real-time data-intensive apps. NodeJS excels in throughput, consistency, and is widely used for large single-page, video streaming, and web applications.

History and Release

• Released in 2009 and the first version of NPM is created. It was introduced by Ryan Dahl.
• In 2010 Express and socket.io are introduced.
• In 2011 LinkedIn, Uber, and many big companies start using NodeJS.
• In 2016 Yarn was introduced along with Node.js 6
• The NodeJS latest version is 20.0.0.

2. Learn about the NodeJS Architecture

• Based on the single-threaded event loop model architecture which means client requests will be executed by a single thread in NodeJS.
• The event-driven nature of NodeJS allows you to handle multiple client requests concurrently.

3. Installation of NodeJS

Installing NodeJS is a very simple procedure. You can download the stable version of NodeJs from the NodeJS official site. Depending on your operating system and system configurations install NodeJS and then you can immediately start working on it. Make sure that your RAM is at least 4GB to support NodeJS.

4. NPM (Node Package Manager)

The Node package manager is one of the most important core concepts to learn in NodeJS. After the installation, part learns about NPM. NPM comes with 800, 000+ libraries that can be used for different purposes. These prebuilt libraries come with their own code to build different features in NodeJS. So you don’t need to build everything from scratch. You can simply install the required library using the npm command and use that in your application. So these libraries help a lot in speeding up the application development process.

5. JSON File

JSON file is another essential and most important concept to learn in NodeJS. The first thing you do in any NodeJS project is creating JSON file. It is the manifest file in any project and you can find this file with the name package.json in your application. It contains the metadata of the project. In other words, it manages and holds the information about packages and dependencies along with the script used in the project. If you ever want to check which packages or dependencies are used in the application, you can simply open this file and check the information.

6. Node.js Fundamentals

From this step, you actually get your hands dirty in the scripting of Node JS. Like other programming languages you learn how to print “Hello World!” and then you start learning the basic concepts like variables, data types, operators, functions, etc in JavaScript. Make sure that you understand all these concepts in JavaScript very well before you move to build the actual application in Node JS.

7. File System

After learning the fundamentals, the next thing you need to learn is how to read and write data into a file instead of the console. To access the physical file system from a directory NodeJS uses the fs module.

8. Events

NodeJS comes with event-driven features and a lot of Node’s core functionality is based on the concept of events. Event is basically a signal that indicates something has happened in the application. In NodeJS Event modules are available for developers to create and handle custom events. Applications built on NodeJS support concurrency because they all are based on single-threaded and event-driven architecture.

9. HTTP Modules

HTTP modules are the powerful building blocks of NodeJS. HTTP’s modules are heavily used for building the server-side networking application. REST API with NodeJS can be built easily using the HTTP module.

10. Frameworks

Like every other server-side language, NodeJS also provides a number of frameworks that help in building the application with better features. It’s a time-consuming process to write code from scratch to build various features in any application. So using the framework in your application makes your work easier and you build any kind of feature at a faster speed. Some popular NodeJS frameworks are given below.

• Express.js
• Meteor.js
• AdonisJs
• NestJs
• Sails
• KoaJS
• LoopbackJS

For more information regarding frameworks you can visit: 10 best node js frameworks

11. Databases

We discussed a lot of concepts that you should know in order to build a fully functional NodeJS application. But what about the information which you need to store in your application? Of course like every other application you need to store the data in the database. Depending on the type of application or requirement you can choose any database and configure it with NodeJS. Some of the best fit database for NodeJS is given below.

1. Relational
   • SQL Server
   • PostgreSQL
   • MariaDB
   • MySQL
2. Cloud Databases
   • CosmoDB
   • DynamoDB
3. Search Engines
   • ElasticSearch
   • Solr
   • Sphinx
4. NoSQL
   • MongoDB
   • Redis
   • Cassandra
   • CouchDB

12. Testing

Any application requires proper testing before it releases in the market. The same goes for the Node. If you’re learning Node, you should also have the knowledge of testing frameworks or libraries for NodeJS applications. Check out some given below testing frameworks and libraries for NodeJS application.

1. Unit, Behavior, Integration Testing
   • Jasmine
   • Jest
   • Enzyme
   • Chai
   • Mocha
2. E2E Testing
   • Selenium
   • Puppeteer

13. Dive Deeper into Advanced Topics

• Middleware: Learn about middleware functions in Express.js and how they enhance the functionality of web servers.
• Authentication and Authorization: Explore authentication strategies such as JWT (JSON Web Tokens) and OAuth, and implement user authentication and authorization in your applications.
• Database Integration: Gain proficiency in integrating Node.js applications with databases like MongoDB, MySQL, or PostgreSQL using ORM/ODM libraries such as Mongoose or Sequelize.
• Testing: Familiarize yourself with testing frameworks like Jest or Mocha, and learn about test-driven development (TDD) and behavior-driven development (BDD).

Conclusion

Learning Node.js is an iterative process that requires patience, practice, and continuous learning. By following this roadmap, you’ll gradually build a strong foundation in Node.js development and gain the skills needed to create powerful, scalable web applications. Remember to stay curious, experiment with different projects, and never hesitate to seek help from the vibrant Node.js community.