Is TotalJS (the NodeJS Framework) worth Checking Out?

TotalJS is an amazing web application framework for NodeJS that enables web developers to efficiently build awesome applications. It embeds various useful functions, and helps users enhance the performance standards for their web and mobile applications. Though we are aware of its several amazing benefits, the module NodeJS framework that lends support to MVC software architecture has got some of the most striking features to have a glance at. Listed below are the top features of TotalJS that look forward to transforming the state of web app development technology in near future.

Integrated web server: This is the most amazing and unique feature of TotalJS. It helps in building rich, smooth web applications, and serves static and dynamic content using its integrated web server. It is a modern framework (all-in framework) that is fast, scalable and hassle-free. However, it is the “embedded functionality of allowing users” to choose their favourite database that sets it apart.

Extensibility: Extensibility is the capability of TotalJS in enabling NodeJS developers extending the in-built features and modules for the application. The web developer can take the help of external resources to perform this task or simply they can modify the source code of the framework. The Extensibility feature provided by TotalJS is simply incredible. The framework enables web developers to seamlessly build their own framework modules or packages. As per their specific needs, developers can easily extend or rewrite existing functionality.

Ability to get integrated with other JS frameworks: TotalJS is designed specifically to help businesses build a stable, feature-rich applications; TotalJS is completely compatible with a horde of client-side frameworks - including Bootstrap, AngularJS, BackboneJS, Polymer, and others. The web app tool also lends support to web sockets, RESTful routing mechanism, and for media streaming (providing an enriched user experience) can change the entire look of your application. With support from other JS frameworks like Bootstrap, Angular or Backbone etc, web developers can take the advantage of industry standard features of these platforms and they can easily build highly scalable and interactive web solutions. With Bootstrap, the web developer or javascript developer can create stunning and highly user friendly cross platform responsive web apps.

It comes integrated with ‘modificators’ which can basically alter or modify the content embedded in JavaScript, CSS or view before minification and compilation. As a result, users can seamlessly tweak some content (should they want) just-in-time prior to compilation process making the process faster. Web developers would know that a modificator plays a vital role or is extremely helpful for third modules.

The modern framework incorporates a unique ‘isomorphic’ code - which basically implies that any given line of code can perform on the client as well as on the server. This an awesome feature of TotalJS that enables reusability of code irrespective of their category i.e. a single piece of code can contribute both client side execution and server side. This is possible because TotalJS is a JavaScript framework and enables developers taking the benefit of JavaScript code that runs on either side. In short, both the front-end and the back-end share the similar code.

TotalJS for NodeJS also lends support to JSONP functionality, and provides enhanced importing dependencies into the view engine. This all simplifies the process of web app development (without an error) for NodeJS users. With JSONP/JSON, many interactive events can be handled in a smooth manner like event driven data transfer to or from view state or making the page asynchronous to achieve better performance. JSONP is extremely popular in the industry for its unmatched quality of data transfer between server and view. Gone are the days, when XML was used for such operation; now with JSON(P) more amount of data can be transferred securely over the internet.

Web developers can largely take advantage of the framework’s fully asynchronous, clean directory structure. It supports cache mechanism, assertion testing, custom mapping files, IP restrictions, NoSQL embedded database, generators, and additional utilities (letting users create an URL request) etc. With all these features a web developer can create an enterprise standard high performance web solution on the fly. In fact, top issues like sensitive data transfer, security loopholes and SQLInjection etc are well cared in TotalJS. So, technically, everything that is required to create stable, secure web applications for businesses is there inside TotalJS.

Another remarkable function of TotalJS comes in the form of its versioning of static files. With versioning, web developers can track each and every modification in codebase even after a long day. This enables JavaScript developer in controlling their codes efficiently and effectively without any glitch. Moreover, this also enables web developers in rolling back their code to a previous version making the whole process more effective. Since web developers often find it hard to reload JavaScript or CSS files due to HTTP cache, this NodeJS framework helps eliminate that problem. It goes a long way in thwarting the issues with HTTP cache. With this feature, the performance of TotalJS increases significantly and tremendously with efficient implementation of cache memory that really makes sense while building large scale enterprise standard web apps.

Its support for simple plain text mail is highly useful too. The web application software now comes integrated with a new method ‘F.logmail ()’ which helps sum up the content with <pre> tag. Using this, one can easily send a simple plain text mail. This is helpful in creating simple text emails that takes very less bandwidth and hence extremely helpful especially in mobile devices.

The optimized TotalJS further allows developers to localize static files for SPA. And important enough, it also lets users create a snapshot of JavaScript or CSS (following once the web framework has been commenced), and store that snapshot into NGINX public directory. With this, the developer gets adequate room in building highly optimized and efficient web apps for different purpose specially building mobile apps that runs under memory constraints.

Now, from above features we can conclude that, TotalJS is simply outstanding in terms of performance and quality of support that it provides to its developers. So, it is really a worthy successor of NodeJS in building highly stable web applications. Finally, we must like to add some added benefits of this framework, like improved importing dependencies, current instance snapshots, mobile device routing and loading framework without HTTP server etc. that makes the framework even more useful than before.

PHP Vs ROR. Which You Should Choose?

“Both PHP and Ruby on Rails are widely accepted technologies of the industry but what makes them differ from each other is their age or experience in the industry. PHP is an old language that was brought to the industry with a high vision and ambition to challenge the monopoly of technologies like Java and .NET. With its inception, the industry found an outstanding product that can help in building highly economic and powerful web applications using PHP in less time and effort as compared to JSP or ASP. On the contrary, Ruby on Rails is a technology that born recently to provide better customization offerings along with quality modern features to grasp the attention of web developers in the industry. RoR has received a remarkable popularity from the industry due to its highly flexible and easy approach to handle complicated web situations among the web developers. Though, both these technologies are serving the web industry with utmost care still there are few uniqueness and loopholes present and those make them differ from each other. Here are how?”

Ease of use and implement: Undoubtedly PHP has an outstanding track record of being easy-to-code for the developers. The syntax of PHP is extremely easy to remember for a web developer due to their similarities with real life words. Hence, PHP has been treated as the best choice for fresher and newbie who want to kick start their career in the web industry. On the contrary, Ruby on Rails has very much similar syntax as that of PHP. In fact, most of its syntaxes are highly similar-to and inspired-from PHP syntax itself; but, the difference is the code length. Since Ruby on Rails is more than a language and indeed it is a language-framework combo, hence it provides enough libraries, classes and functions to make the development process not only faster but also effective. With its inbuilt functions and libraries, the developer finds it easy to write Ruby codes over the Rails framework in a hassle free way.

Performance prospective: Performance is one of the important criteria while choosing a technology from its peers. As a core language, PHP always stands ahead in terms of performance when compared to Ruby on Rails. In PHP, everything is at a lower degree of complexity and it’s the task of the developer to make it perfect with his coding experience, expertise and efficiency. RoR, on the other hand, has incorporated functions and classes which might make the coding experience better; but when we consider the performance, it will definitely fall behind PHP. How? Suppose there is a function in RoR for sorting an array of inputs; when the Ruby developer writes the corresponding method on the platform (IDE); the platform tries to find out the library or file within which the method definition is present. Then, the pointer moves to that method for definition and executes the sorting operation. On the other hand, same operations can be directly called from the inline function in PHP; this reduces the unnecessary instructions to fetch the location and method definition from a remote place. As a result, the process becomes more efficient and effective and the performance is amplified.

Systematic approach: Planning makes an operation near to perfection if not the perfect. Hence, in the industry planning is always given more priority for any web project. It helps in assuming and estimating approximate risk, resources and problems that may require more attention from the developers. So, it is always better to get prepared for the situation in advance than to face it during the development process as a surprise. In this perspective, Ruby on Rails looks prominent and promising as compared to PHP due to its intrinsic architecture that encourages Ruby developers in crafting efficient web applications in a systematic approach. Its core architecture always helps in creating web solutions in an efficient and systematic procedure to avoid unnecessary stress, burden and chances of failures in the application development project. With PHP, this is absolutely not possible without the experience and high effort from the web developer. Here, there is no predefined and trusted approach to move-on in the development process rather the PHP developer needs to design and define the approach by him. This is the biggest disadvantage of any language as against a framework. Though, PHP developers can make this possible with the help of enterprise standard PHP frameworks like zend, symfony, laravel and cakePHP, etc.; but this is not possible with the core PHP language.

Scalability is a concern: Agile methodology has received incredible popularity in the industry due to its on-the-spot productivity. With agile methodology, a web application comes to the live stage from the very beginning with less features but that enables it to be productive for any business. With PHP and RoR this is possible; but what makes them different is the approach. PHP needs extensive coding to make an application development process to be scalable; whereas RoR is already provided by its inbuilt architecture for this purpose which is highly reliable and tested one.

Productivity: With RoR, the Ruby developer becomes much more productive as compared to any PHP web developer who works on PHP core language. This is nevertheless to say that, a language is usually low in productive as compared to any framework due to presence of the in-build smart IDE, plug-ins, in-built methods and modules within the platform. And these features severely help web developers in building enterprise standard web solutions on the fly.

Resource availability: Availability of resources makes sense if they are open source and free. Fortunately, both the technologies are free and open source; but, the amount of resources available for PHP is simply way ahead to that of RoR. This is due to its old age and more experience in the industry. These resources can definitely help PHP developers in getting their job done with less effort and time by little modification or twist to the existing source code from the web.

Future ready: Both PHP and RoR support all types of modern amenities including mobile friendly app development using HTML5, CSS3 and jQuery etc. Along with that, Cloud support, cross platform design, and responsive app development is possible; but these can be easily handled in RoR due to presence of inherent plug-ins and modules while it needs some extra effort from the PHP developers in creating the required atmosphere by themselves.

Final words: Keeping all above perquisites of RoR, it is clear that, Ruby on Rails dominates PHP in almost every sector; but we must understand the limitations of PHP as a language as compared to a language-framework combo i.e. RoR.

What is a Good NodeJS Workflow, Editor Tools & Framework?

Programming editors and frameworks that simplify complex client-side development and server-side development goes a long way in helping developers attain higher grounds in web development than it was ever possible before. Things have changed drastically, but most importantly; the manner in which developers interact with their web development process has mutated to a different realm. JavaScript i.e. more popular as a client side scripting language has emerged as a full-fledged programming language just like Java or .Net etc. Now, with JavaScript we can write server side codes as well without compromising on the quality of the application; in fact, it is making the process more efficient and easier than before.

NodeJS is a JavaScript framework having the capability to handle server requests just like Apache Tomcat seems as a miracle for the industry. Who had imagined JavaScript to be used as a server? But, this is now possible with NodeJS. NodeJS is highly proficient in multiple and concurrent request handling. It does the task in a more systematic approach to avoid critical situations like deadlock and resource blocking. Anyway, now we will discuss on few renowned editors, workflow and frameworks for NodeJS.

Below are some workflow, editors and frameworks for NodeJS that not just provide enhanced control over code in software application development, but also help benefit from the mainstream technologies. And they all contribute to building real-time applications with utmost ease and miscellany across distributed devices.

Primus for expert developers:

It renders a common low level interface to developers, enabling them to smoothly converse in real-time. Unlike most other frameworks that complicate real-time interaction, Primus functions more like an abstraction layer, and helps thwart module lock-in. With this, developers are no longer required to rewrite API when their project requirements change. It even features a hassle-free, stream compatible interface for both the client and the server. And its unique offline detection feature makes it a super choice for experienced NodeJS developers. It is more popular as a npm manager in the industry that enables NodeJS developers easily switch between different frameworks in a hassle free manner; because everything is taken care by the Primus itself. Features like real-time framework switching, package management and built-in reconnect have made it stand strongly in the industry.

Locomotive for those who have the thirst for speed:

Developers who seek an intriguing code with faster development should try Locomotive, which is a uniquely designed web framework for NodeJS. The software integrates a predictable file layout and familiar MVC patterns - offering a well-built structure for controllers and routes. It helps create a smooth app development with ease of use, for certain. With its unique MVC architecture, the NodeJS JavaScript developer will gain the maximum speed from the in-built resource isolation technology. On the contrary, it will improve the performance and scalability of the application to a higher level. It can be integrated with any template engine making it flexible enough to deal with ever changing demands of the industry. RESTFul Routing is yet another benefit that Locomotive provides for its users or JavaScript NodeJS developers. Other features like Convention over configuration, Routing helpers and Built on Express can help NodeJS developer while creating innovative web server applications in an efficient manner.

WebStorm- A JetBrains IDE for NodeJS:

Developed by Jet Brains, WebStorm is an exceptional IDE for JavaScript. It is a lightweight yet feature-rich code editor that provides complete support for NodeJS and JavaScript. The tool helps users produce high-quality codes, and benefit from features such as automated, safe refactorings, error detection, smart code completion, and strong navigation. Smart code completion or Auto Code Completion can help NodeJS developers in writing JavaScript code quickly on the IDE. It has features like break point for testing purposes and to find out the flow of a piece of code in an application. Navigation feature helps in quick code navigation and file navigation with a single click with a search key. Altogather, it’s an amazing IDE for NodeJS developers.

Cloud 9- the cloud based IDE for NodeJS:

It is for gratis, and impressively provides users with powerful online code editing capabilities. Cloud 9 is basically a cloud-based IDE, supporting app development tool comes embedded with live previewing and built-in image editor. Using this, developers can easily write, run and debug their code; all in the air i.e. Cloud. So, it is the most advanced and future ready technology for NodeJS and should be used by every NodeJS developer. And not to forget, its unique key binding editor function that enriches NodeJS experience.

Grasshopper

Web applications revere Grasshopper as a flexible framework designed for NodeJS. Infused with a bundle of features, the web app framework comes with integrated support for dependency injection, session management support for custom session storage, and Gzip compression of responses. These features not only boost the performance of an application, but also increase the productivity of the application. The security limitations are highly emphasized in this framework and they have taken extensive care in this platform. The software also filters for intercepting requests, lends support to i18n, and manages updation and validation of models from forms.

StrongLoop- API server for NodeJS application:

StrongLoop is an ideal API server that enables users to conveniently optimize and cluster NodeJS applications. The web app framework is most known for its StrongOps, an in-house product, and lets users efficiently build APIs for web, mobile, and other devices. It also allows users to write business logic in NodeJS, and connect to several data sources.

Atom- the tiny dynamite:

Although there are other notable NodeJS editors and frameworks as well, Atom sumps up our list. The text editor basically comes embedded with contemporary code completion functions. There are eight syntax themes and four user interfaces that come integrated into Atom, all of them adding enhanced customization for the user. The open-source application further helps users create cross-platform applications using popular web technologies.

Besides the above listed workflows, editors and frameworks, there are many potential software tools available in the industry; some are even more powerful than our listed ones, but probably in dormant or hidden stage making us unable to grasp them. Anyway, we are open to take your suggestions. Please do suggest for even better listing in coming days. If you are looking to outsource software development to a trusted software services provider, then it would help to know that Mindfire Solutions has top notch JavaScript development team in India which has executed hundreds of projects in the domain. We build applications which best suit our customer’s budget and business interests.