NodeJS vs AngularJS: Differences to Consider
Both Node.js and AngularJS are developed to build web applications using JavaScript, both use JavaScript syntax, but they work and use it in quite different ways.
Now before we look into Node.js vs AngularJS, let us first understand Node.js and its advantages.
Node.js: What Are Its Advantages?
Node.js is a cross-platform runtime environment for running JavaScript applications outside the browser. It is a free and open-source tool to build server-side JavaScript applications. Additionally, it provides an extensive library of JavaScript modules that simplify coding.
Benefits of Node.js are:
- It’s open-source
- It includes an API that allows developers to build different types of servers
- It’s scalable. Developers can use it either for horizontal scaling or vertical scaling
- It supports out of the box unit testing. Developers can use any JavaScript unit testing framework to test their Node.js code
- It enables rapid development suitable for applications that require frequent changes
- It is a high-performance tool, thanks to incorporating non-blocking I/O operations. It employs the JavaScript V8 engine to execute code, increasing its speed
- It supports scripting languages like Ruby, Coffee Script, and TypeScript
AngularJS: What Are Its Advantages?
The AngularJS framework is designed for building dynamic web applications. It allows developers to use HTML as template language and lets HTML’s syntax to express application’s components briefly but clearly.
Benefits of AngularJS are:
- It’s open-source
- It provides a smooth, dynamic Model View Control Architecture, making it easier for developers to create client-side web applications
- It provides built-in features like filters, directives, and automatic data binding
- It’s easy to use, thanks to decoupling Document Object Models (DOM) manipulation from application logic
- It makes unit testing easy, thanks to its built-in test runner
- It uses the Plain Old JavaScript Objects (POJO) data model, producing spontaneous and clean code, ideal for interactive, user-friendly web-based apps
- It supports object-oriented, functional, and event-driven programming paradigms
Following our understanding of Node.js and AngularJS, let us now examine the key differences between Node.js and AngularJS.
Node.JS | Angular JS |
Node.js is a cross-platform run-time environment for applications written in JavaScript language. | AngularJS is an open-source web application development framework developed by Google. |
You need to install Node.js on the computer system. | You just need to add AngularJS file just like any other JavaScript file to use it in applications. |
It is written in C, C++ and JavaScript languages. Node.js supports non-blocking input/output API and an event-driven architecture. | AngularJS is written entirely in JavaScript. It also allows extending the HTML’s syntax to describe the components of your application. |
Node.js is useful to build fast and scalable server-side networking applications. | This framework is best suited for building single-page client-side web applications. |
Node.js has many different frameworks like Sails.js, Partial.js, and Express.js. | AngularJS is itself web application framework. |
It is Ideal for developing small size projects. | It is Ideal for creating highly active and interactive web apps. |
Developers can use JavaScript on the client as well as the server. So, they can focus on learning one language. | Angular JS needs a deep understanding of prototyping, scope, and various other JavaScript aspects. |
Node.js is quite useful for generating database queries because JavaScript is used to write database queries for databases like MongoDB, CouchDB. This reduces the developer’s task as they don’t need to remember the syntax differences while combining Node.js and NoSQL databases. | Almost all other frameworks implement MVC by asking splitting an app into MVC components. It is difficult task, but Angular makes it simple as it implements MVC by splitting the app into MVC components. |
Node.js will be an ideal option for the real-time collaborative drawing/editing-type apps, where the user can see the document being modify live by another user like Dropbox or Google Docs. | Angular’s declarative approach simplifies app development in a sort of WYSIWYG way. Instead of spending time on how the program flows and what loaded first the developers can define what they want, and Angular JS will take care of the dependencies. |
Node.js will be useful in situations when something faster and more scalable is needed. | Angular is useful in creating real time applications like instant messaging or chat apps. |
On the whole, AngularJS is a client-side framework, whereas NodeJS is a cross-platform runtime environment. The JavaScript developers can integrate NodeJS and AngularJS to simplify the development of isomorphic applications. They can even use both AngularJS and NodeJS as two primary components of the MEAN software stack along with MongoDB and ExpressJS.
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