Node JS Projects

Introduction

Node.js is becoming one of the most popular JavaScript platforms over the last couple of years. It is easy to get started in those Node.js projects because it is built on Chrome’s V8 JavaScript engine. A good beginning is half the battle. Laying out a project structure in a practical way is one of the complex parts of the development process and indeed, a delicate process. 

By making the effort to understand the inner workings of a web development framework, we open ourselves to insights about the various ways of not only the framework itself but also about popular programming algorithms and their design decisions. An integral aspect of how Node.js works under the hood, event loop-based apparatus for accomplishing asynchronous behavior. 

In this blog, we’re going to discuss the Node.js project structure and cover the best practices that help you to organize and manage your Node.js applications. 

What are the best practices for Node.js project structure?

1. Separate business logic and API routes

Frameworks like Express.js are perfectly suitable for managing views, routes, and requests because it provides incredible features and functionalities to do so. With such support, it becomes tempting for developers to put business logic into their API routes. But it will quickly make them into monolithic blocks that reveal themselves to be unmanageable and hard to read and prone to decomposition. But make sure that the testability of your application will reduce, with consequently longer development times. 

2. Conduct unit testing

We can also implement unit testing for Node.js projects which is an incredibly essential stage in developing any applications. The entire project flow — not only the final results — depends on it since buggy code will slow down the development process and may cause other-related problems. 

A simple and easy way to test your Node.js applications is to test them by units and isolate a section of code and verify its correctness. While implementing procedural programming, a unit may be a single function or procedure which is performed by the developers who write the code. 

3. Use a style guide

When we open a newly created file from another source for the first time, we then spend the next hour reformatting the braces to be on different lines, changing the spaces to tabs, and vice versa. The challenge here is a mixture of opinionated developers and no company standard style guide. It is easy to understand the codebase if it’s all written in a consistent style and decreases the cognitive overhead of whether you should be writing with tabs or spaces. 

It is not required to have your own rules, instead, it is better to follow an existing set of guidelines. Some good examples of it are Google, Standard JS, Airbnb, and jQuery, just pick one of them and stick with it!

4. Use Helmet while writing a web app

Make sure that you’re using Helmet while writing a web application, there are some common best practices that you must follow to secure your web application:

  • Impose all connections to HTTPS
  • XSS protection
  • Set a Context-Security-Policy header
  • Stop clicking jacking using X-frame options

Rather than configuring all these headers, use Helmet and set them all too sensible defaults for you that will allow you to tweak the ones that you need. 

It is easy to set up on an Express.js application, just run the command given down:

$ npm install helmet

Now, add your code when setting up Express add:

var helmet = require(‘helmet’);app.use(helmet());

Code Source 

5. Use Asynchronous Code

JavaScript is popular for its callback functions that allow you to identify asynchronous behavior as your number of chained operations increases and resulting in what is infamously known as callback hell. To overcome this problem, ES 6 came out with the Promises API which makes it easier to write asynchronous code in JavaScript and develop excellent web apps. With ES 8, the async syntax was addressed to further simplify things and make the API more natural. So, it is advocated to ditch clunky callback functions in favor of await and promises-based syntax in your Node.js project which allows you to write clean and better code for functional programming setup.

6. Monitor your applications

When something goes wrong with your application or any critical situation occurs, you’ll be notified every time. You don’t want to check your Twitter feed and check hundreds of angry users telling you that your servers are down and apps are broken for the last few hours. So having some things that notify you of abnormal behavior is essential. Once you have signed up for KeyMetrics, simply run the command given below:

$ pm2 interact [public_key] [private_key] [machine_name]

Code source

Running this command will start sending memory data and exception reporting to key metrics servers to view from their dashboard. However, it provides monitoring based on logs to quickly react to problems before they get out of hand. 

7. Use Docker

Dockers help to empower your web apps to run in isolation and make your deployments more secure. Docker images are simple and lightweight which allow absolute deployments and reflect production settings in the vicinity.

8. Avoid Garbage

Node.js uses an acquisitive garbage collector which delays until it has to reclaim unused memory. If your memory usage is full, then it might not be leaked but somewhat node’s typical idle behavior. To adjust your app’s garbage collector, you can raise flags to V8, just by running the given command in the box:

$node –optimize_for_size –max_old_space_size=920 –gc_interval=100 main.js

Final Thoughts

Before you start building your Node.js project, make sure to follow such practices and then begin to develop your project. So, here are the Node.js best practices that you must follow in 2021 and beyond to develop a perfect web application for your business. If you think that we have missed any additional Node.js practices that should be mentioned in the article, then feel free to approach in the comment section given below.

By Anurag Rathod

Anurag Rathod is an Editor of Appclonescript.com, who is passionate for app-based startup solutions and on-demand business ideas. He believes in spreading tech trends. He is an avid reader and loves thinking out of the box to promote new technologies.