NodeJS Best Practices: A Bible For Every NodeJS Developers

NodeJS is an open-source, front-end, and backend development technology built on Chrome’s V8 engine. It is widely used for the development of large-scale applications. Thus, it becomes necessary to know how to make the development process smoother, less arduous, and clutter-free. All this can be achieved with NodeJS best practices.

In this blog, we will discuss the top best NodeJs practices every developer should follow; before that, let’s see a brief introduction to NodeJS.

What Is NodeJS

Node.js is a server-side JavaScript environment that allows you to build scalable applications and web services. A JavaScript runtime works on the server-side and supports the asynchronous programming model. It is equipped with event-driven architecture and supports modules, shared between different applications.

Nodejs’s popularity comes from its simplicity, speed, and security features. It has gained momentum over the years because of its ease of use, performance, and easy development environment. Several large companies like Google, Facebook, Amazon, are using it. It is ideal for building backend systems that run on various platforms and operating systems, such as Linux, Windows, and Mac OS X.

Let’s head on to the NodeJS best practices now!

Start Your Project With npm init

When starting a new project with Node.js, you should use npm init to get the project up and running. The package that will be installed is called npm-package-name. A package manager will install all the dependencies needed for your project. Its name can be anything you want as long as it is unique.

You will see that it contains two fields:

Name: The name of the package, which should be unique. It should not spaces or dashes.

Description: The description of the package should be human-readable. It should not contain spaces or dashes.

Concatenating Several JavaScript Files Into One

The word concatenation comes from the Latin word “concidere,” “to unite,” and which the term to join several files together in coding. A concatenation operator is a powerful tool that can combine multiple files into one file. We can use it to merge two files or concatenate several files into one file.

This approach reduces the number of files needed to be downloaded and made available on a server; thus, application loads in relatively less time.

The syntax of the concatenation operator is:(source) + (target). In order to do so, we have to specify the name of the source file (the first field) and the target file (the second field). Then we need to add a semicolon at the end of each line, and then we should press Ctrl+Enter key combination.

Make Use Of Style Guides

When developing a project in a team, it is difficult to maintain a constant Style throughout the project, so using a style guide and sticking to it will prevent you from spending hours fixing things up.

You can use the following tools to check whether the selected style guide is enforced.

• Prettier
• ESLint
• Automate Format and Lint on Save
• With Husky and Lint-staged Combined
• Lint-staged
• Husky
• EditorConfig

Utilise Third-Party Tools

NodeJS is undoubtedly widely used by a large community of developers around the world. Thanks to NPM, for providing well-maintained, feature-rich, well-documented frameworks, libraries, and tools for a variety of use cases. Thus, it is in the benefit of developers to use these tools in their projects.

As a developer, you should find such tools that make the development process much easier. Till then, have a look at the following tools.

Nodemon: Restarts the app automatically when a change is detected in the file.

Moment: Deals with date & time

Winston: universal logging library

Gulp: Automates workflow

The above list of tools/libraries comes in handy when it is required. It is important to realise that a developer should over-rely on these tools and use their own skills and experience to the max.

Error Handling

Error handling in a proper way makes debugging easier. Solving a bug beforehand can save you millions. This is the power of error handling.

Actually, error handling does not eliminate errors in code. It’s responsible for making your code smarter so that it can deal with unexpected contingencies.

.catch() handler is considered the best way to deal with errors.

Code Style Best Practices

Following is the list of NodeJS Code Style best practices. You should seriously consider implementing the same.

Utilise ESLint Tool

ESLint is a code-style checker that helps you to write clean and maintainable JavaScript code. It is useful in Nodejs projects to enforce code style, improve the code’s quality, and fix common errors in your code. It detects errors in your JavaScript code and provides warnings with suggested fixes.

Install NodeJS Specific Plugins

Nodejs-specific plugins, coded in JavaScript-coded gets easily integrate into an existing Nodejs application without learning any new technology or frameworks. Credits goes to node-specific API, making it easy to integrate into an existing application. 

Naming The Functions

Except for anonymous functions, name all the functions, including closures and callbacks. This practice will help profile a node app and make finding a particular function easy.

Follow Naming Convention For Classes, Functions, Constants, and Variables

For functions, constants and variables follow lowerCamelCase, for classes use UpperCamelCase. This approach will help you easily distinguish between them. One can give a descriptive name; however, try to keep it short.

Code Sample

// for class name we use UpperCamelCase

class SomeClassExample {}

// for const names we make use of the const keyword with lowerCamelCase

const config = {

key: ‘value’

};

// for variables and functions we employ lowerCamelCase

let someVariableExample = ‘value’;

function doSomething() {}

Place Modules First

It is good to keep the module first in each of the files, outside of functions. This will enable you to tell the dependencies of a file quickly and helps you avoid a bunch of errors.

Do Not Keep Modules As Files Directly

Place index.js file exposing modules internals and a module in a folder so every consumer will pass through it. It works as an interface that leads to accommodate changes without breaking the contract.

Make Use Of Arrow Function Expressions (=>)

Though it is advisable to use async-await and avoid function parameters with older APIs that accept promises or callbacks, the use of arrow functions leads to a compact code structure.

Closing Notes

This is all about NodeJS best practices. These best practices make the development process organised, coherence among team members enhances as the code becomes readable, and, of course, application performance will touch the sky. We hope you will implement these best practices in your next NodeJS development project. 

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