In this era of technological advancement, Node.js is dominating the web development landscape. Node.js is an open-source and JavaScript run-time environment that enables developers to build server-side web applications in less time. It contains everything that helps you to develop robust, secure and flexible applications. It offers a wide range of frameworks that can enhance your application scalability, boosting the productivity of your development team. In this article, we have shortlisted the best Node.js frameworks for you that are packaged with great tools and libraries. Let’s have a look.

Amazing Node.js Frameworks For Developers

#8. Express.js  

Express is the most popular Node.js framework with 4,3000 GitHub stars. It is flexible enough to make your web development fun. It consists of a wide range of features for mobile and web applications that enable developers to build robust applications. It provides powerful and lightweight HTTP utility methods to build single-page applications, websites, and APIs. Express.js acts as middleware, meaning it assists in managing everything from setting up and configuring routes to sending and receiving requests between the database and front-end of an application. This can help developers to create robust APIs quickly.

Express.js Community to empower your development team

Express.js has a vast and vibrant community that is consistently improving and developing   Express projects. Let’s have a look at the Express community.

  • Mailing-list: It is a Google group forum having more than 2,000 Express users. You can join the group and go through the Express posts (posted by users and developers) to get any relevant information about Express.
  • Gitter: It is an Express.js chatroom where developers can discuss issues or the latest news related to Express.
  • IRC channel: It is a channel that enables developers to express their views on Express.js. They can raise any queries related to Express and get quick feedback.
  • Technical Committee: The technical committee of Express conducts an online meeting every two weeks where they discuss the ideas, issues, and views related to Express projects in order to make Express even more powerful.

More about Express.js

# 7. Meteor

Meteor is an open-source platform for mobile, web and desktop applications. It is the most popular Node.js framework, branding itself as the “fastest way to build JavaScript apps” on their website.

Why Meteor?

  • It requires developers to write fewer lines of code to build the applications that would otherwise require a lot of coding. If they are developing an application for different platforms such as Windows, iOS, desktop, or Android, then Meteor allows them to reuse the same code for these different platforms.
  • You can integrate your existing technologies with Meteor such as Angular, Node.js, Cordova, Mongo DB, etc. It lets you focus on building your applications rather than threading the distinct components together.
  • Galaxy, a PaaS (platform-as-a-service) application of Meteor built specifically for Meteor apps, makes the app deployment manageable and fun.
  • Meteor has a brilliant developer support team that helps developers in troubleshooting and improving their code within the Meteor framework.

More about Meteor

# 6. Koa

Koa is developed by the same team that developed Express. It has 27,000 GitHub stars. The idea behind building Koa is to make a lightweight framework that is more robust and expressive than Express. Unlike Express, Koa enables developers to work seamlessly without any callbacks. Also, the Koa framework doesn’t act as middleware, allowing developers to have more control over set-up and configuration. But every framework comes with strengths and weaknesses. Because it’s not middleware, Koa can’t work with traditional Node frameworks such as next, req, res.

How Koa is different from Express?

Unlike Express, Koa

  • Does not require domains
  • Has better error handling capability
  • Has no callbacks
  • Does not provide convenience utilities, like sending files. It is more inclined towards a modular structure
  • Less relies on middleware, providing an amazing and elegant bundle of methods that makes application development fast.

More about Koa

# 5. Sails

Sails is one of the most powerful Node.js frameworks that helps developers to build enterprise-grade Node.js applications in less time. It is very fast and easy to use. According to its website, Sails only takes 48 seconds to get installed in your system. It has over 20,800 stars on GitHub.  

How Sails helps in streamlining your business logic

  • It auto-generates the REST APIs that help you to run the back-end of your application without writing any code. For example, if you want to search, filter, sort, create and associate dentists in some healthcare application, then you just need to run sails generate api dentist. This, in turn, speeds up the development process, reducing the time-to-market.
  • Sails framework uses Waterline, a powerful Object-Relational Mapping (ORM). Waterline is a next-generation retrieval and storage engine that offers a uniform API. With this, developers can access things from any databases and protocols, including MongoDB, MySQL, Redis, PostgreSQL and more.
  • Sails provides access control and security features in the form of middleware functions that can be reusable. It facilitates encapsulation, which reduces the requirement to write a lot of code, streamlining your business logic.
  • Sails is compatible with any front-end solution, including Angular, JQuery, Android, iOS, Ember and more.

More about Sails:

# 4. Nest

The Nest is a Node.js framework (with over 20,000 stars on GitHub) for building reliable, robust, efficient and scalable server-side applications. It contains a wide variety of libraries, tools, and APIs that need to build enterprise-grade applications. It has a modular structure that provides you the flexibility to use any other libraries. Being built on TypeScript, it inherits all the advantages of the latest JavaScript features, bringing amazing design patterns and robust solutions to the Node.js world.

Enterprise services provided by Nest

Nest provides a wide range of consulting services that help you to empower your business. They can accelerate your development process and help you to reduce the time-to-market for your product. Look at the following.

  • Development and technical guidance: The technical guidance team provides you the smart, reliable and secure solution for any of your issues related to web development using Nest.
  • Migration assistance: If you are looking to transform your legacy software, then with Nest, you don’t need to worry. There migration assistance team will provide you the appropriate and best migration solution.
  • In-depth code reviews: The Nest experts can review your code in order to eradicate hazardous bugs and issues, providing you an error-free solution.

More about Nest

Latest version: Nest 5

GitHub link: https://github.com/nestjs/nest

Companies that used Nest: Reposit, Mantro, Netlify, Code Guesser and more.

# 3. Loopback

LoopBack is a highly-flexible open-source Node.js framework that allows you to build dynamic REST APIs without requiring you to write a lot of code. It enables you to access data from a wide variety of databases such as MySQL, MS SQL Server, Oracle, MongoDB, and other REST APIs. With Loopback, you can easily create client apps using iOS, Android and Javascript SDKs. Applications built using Loopback can be run in the cloud or on-premises.

Why Loopback for business?

  • Packed with powerful features and built-in functionalities, Loopback accelerates the development and delivery process of your products and solutions, driving growth and revenue for your business.
  • It can easily integrate with existing technology such as blockchain, APIs, MongoDB, etc. This enables your development team to build high-quality, robust and modern applications.
  • It has the ability to auto-generate the entire API layer, saving precious time of developers in designing and deploying the REST APIs.

Companies using Loopback

  • Strongloop, an IBM company, has used the Loopback framework to build an API platform.
  • Flighoffice has used Loopback in building the ERP systems for aviation industries.
  • Kumisoft has used the Loopback framework to build a unique and amazing solution for its clients.

More about Loopback

Latest version: Loopback 4

GitHub link: https://github.com/strongloop/loopback-next/

Companies using Loopback: IBM, Sapient, Symantec, ShoppingPal, Kumisoft, FlightOffice

# 2. Adonis.js

Adonis.js is a powerful Node.js framework that contains expressive APIs with elegant syntax, enabling developers to build full-stack web applications. It has a stable and rich ecosystem that consists of a wide range of libraries and tools (released under MIT license). Adonis can run on any major operating system, including Windows, Linux, Ubuntu, etc. The only dependencies of this framework are npm and Node.js.

Let’s have a look at some of the Adonis ecosystem:

  • Edge: Edge is a template engine for Adonis.js. The template engine helps you to create HTML templates with minimal code, enhancing the developer's productivity and leading to faster development of applications.
  • Indicative: Indicative is a data validation library used to validate complex data objects.
  • Ace:  Ace is used by Adonis for creating command-line applications.

Latest version: Adonis 4.1

#1. Total.js

Total.js is a modern Node.js framework that is fully compatible with other frameworks including. Backbone.js, Polymer, Bootstrap, Angular and more. The main idea behind this framework is to be simple and stable without any hardware dependencies. It lets you create powerful and amazing web applications, real-time applications, IoT applications, REST services and more.

Benefits of Total.js includes:

  • Low memory requirement
  • Less CPU utilization
  • Supports WebSockets, SMTP mail sender, media streaming themes
  • Supports auto compression for CSS, HTML and js files

Conclusion: Selecting a Node.js framework

Choosing the best Node.js framework for your business can be difficult. Here are some tips that will help you to select the best Node.js framework to meet your needs:

  • Analyze the requirements for your application you want to build.
  • Weigh the pros and cons of each Node.js framework on the basis of its speed, simplicity, set-up and installation, configuration, complexities, learning curve, and GitHub stars or use cases. (We should keep in mind that GitHub stars are not the only parameter to define the popularity of certain Node.js frameworks).
  • Also, consider the robustness and scalability of the framework.

Contact us if you want to build amazing applications with Node.js. Our Node.js experts will deliver a powerful solution that will meet your unique business needs.

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