Understanding Important Differences Between NodeJS And AngularJS
By: Nelly Nelson
Tags: Development, Angular, Node, Nodejs, Angularjs

With more and more businesses going digital, app development companies have started creating more unique and robust applications & websites for their clients. For developing interactive web applications to boost the user-experience, everyone prefers the two most popular frameworks, namely — NodeJS and AngularJs.

These two JavaScript technologies are similar yet different from each other. They have varied functionalities and performance levels when it comes to creating applications. Which to choose is a difficult task. Therefore, in this blog, we will understand the ins and outs of both frameworks.

What is a JavaScript Framework?

When any developer thinks of creating a platform for its client, he chooses the best JavaScript-based website or application layout, which can help achieve the expected desire. The JavaScript framework is nothing but a set of JavaScript code libraries that are pre-written to use in various features’ routine development process. It helps automate the repetitive process of using features like templating and two-way binding.

The JavaScript frameworks are used to design the website as it makes them more responsive. Some of the most popular JavaScript frameworks are — AngularJs, React, VueJs, and NodeJs.

What is NodeJS?

NodeJS is one of the most popular open-source server frameworks compatible with many different platforms, like Mac OS X, Windows, and Linux. It is mostly used in creating networking applications. Besides this, the applications that need to anticipate a lot of scalabilities are developed using NodeJS.

Features of NodeJS

1. Scalability

NodeJS applications can be scaled in both a horizontal and vertical manner to help improvise the app’s performance.

2. Server Development

With the amazing in-built APIs, the NodeJS developers can create many different servers like TCP server, DNS server, and HTTP server.

3. Enhanced Performance

The NodeJS developers can efficiently perform non-blocking performances and enhance their web applications’ performance using this framework.

4. Open-source

NodeJS is entirely open-source and free to download and use.

5. Unit Testing

With NodeJS, the developers get a unit testing named Jasmine. It enables them to test the code easily.

Benefits of NodeJS

Develop real-time web apps

Higher performance

Server-side coding

Communicational operations

Quick and Scalable

NodeJs Architecture

When we talk about NodeJs, it is considered one of the finest server-side platforms that enable developers to build easy and scalable network apps. It uses a non-blocking I/O and event-driven model that makes real-time apps that are lightweight and efficient.

1. Highly Scalable

Using a single-threaded model with event looping, NodeJS helps the server respond in a non-blocking manner and makes the server scalable. With the help of NodeJS, the developers can work on the old programs and provide services to it, which can make it a much larger number of requests.

2. Event-driven and Asynchronous

In the NodeJs library, all the APIs are asynchronous. This means that the NodeJS server doesn’t wait for an API to return the data, it directly moves to the next API and notifies the event mechanism.

3. No Buffering

By using non-blocking I/O calls, NodeJs operates a single thread and allows it to support a massive number of concurrent connections without switching the context of the thread. Here, the design of sharing a thread observes a pattern that can help in building an accompanying app.

Popular Applications Created Using NodeJS

NodeJS is used to create applications in various fields like Law, Computers, Electronics, Lifestyle, and more. There are more than 179k websites in the market that are created using NodeJS. Some of the most popular apps created using NodeJS development services are — PayPal, Linked In, Netflix, eBay, Yahoo, and GoDaddy.

What is AngularJS?

AngularJS, the JavaScript framework, is an open-source platform maintained by Google. It enables the developers to create web applications that focus on the client-side. The AngularJS developers use HTML as a template language, and syntax is done to express the application’s components.

Features of AngularJS

1. MVW Architecture

In Angular, we have MVW (Model-View-Whatever) architecture on the top of the MVC framework. Here the view is basically manipulated, and it remodels DOM to update the data.

2. POJO Model

POJO model stands for Plain Old JavaScript Objects model. It is used by the developers to analyze the data flow of the development process and helps to create loops. Besides this, POJO also enables clear code to create a customer-building app.

3. MVC Framework

When we talk about the AngularJS framework, it comprises three paradigms — Model, View, and Controllers. The MVC model helps the developers to combine the logic without the use of code automatically.

4. Easy to Use

AngularJS is considered one of the easy to use frameworks. It also helps to decouple the DOM manipulation.

Benefits of AngularJS

HTML debugging

Huge developing community

Quick scaffold

Perfect documentation

Comprehensive solution

AngularJS Architecture

The AngularJS architecture follows the MVW model, which makes it capable of supporting different patterns like the Model-View-View or Model-View-Controller model. Let’s understand the Model-View-Whatever (MVW) architecture in detail.

1. Model

Model is the lowest level of responsibility where the data is maintained and managed. This level responds to the request from the view and gets the instructions from the controller for any kind of updates.

2. View

The view is responsible for showcasing various kinds of data to the users.

3. Controller

The controller interacts between the view and the model. It responds to the input from the user and performs interaction.

Popular Applications Created Using AngularJS

AngularJs enables the developers to create powerful applications by keeping the features in mind. There are around 383k web applications in the market created by AngularJs. Some of these are — Upwork, Lego, Weather, IBM, DoubleClick, JetBlue, Freelancer, and more.

Compare — NodeJS Vs. AngularJS

Both NodeJs and AngularJS are the most popularly used JavaScript technologies in the world. These technologies have their own benefits and help the developers in their own ways to create a wonderful application. NodeJS is a well-known cross-platform runtime environment, while on the other hand, AngularJS is a JavaScript framework. Here let us understand the important differences between these two technologies.

1. Installation

With NodeJS, the developers can write applications in JavaScript. But the app needs an environment like macOS, Linux, and Windows to run on. Therefore, app developers install NodeJs to create a development environment. While on the other hand, there is no need to install AngularJS. The developers only need to embed the files in the codebase.

2. Web Framework

Another point of comparison is a web framework. AngularJS is one of the most popular web frameworks used to automate the app development task and creating different applications. While NodeJS is not used as a web framework, they select NodeJs based frameworks like Express.js, Sails.js, and Meteor.js.

3. Working with Data

When it comes to implementing the MVC architecture pattern, AngularJS supports two-way data binding. AngularJs is a technology that does not offer any feature to write the query in the database. While, if we talk about NodeJS, it allows the developers to create non-relational database queries.

4. Important Features

NodeJS and AngularJS are the frameworks that comprise the best features that enable the developers to create top-rated applications. One such common feature is the support of MVC architecture. When we separately list out their differences, we can get a clear idea of which framework can be used in creating which type of application.

AngularJs allows the developers to use HTML as a language for creating templates. It enables creating single-page & dynamic web apps with features like filters, templates, data binding, scope, deep linking, dependency injection, and directives.

On the other hand, NodeJS is a framework that comes with an array of features for the developers to create a server-side and networking app. With NodeJs, the developers can simplify the development process of single-page websites, similar I/O intensive websites, and video streaming sites.

5. Programming Language & Support

When we talk about NodeJs and AngularJs, they both support a lot of programming languages besides JavaScript. NodeJS supports TypeScript, CoffeeScript, and Ruby. While AngularJs supports TypeScript, CoffeeScript, and Dart.

Besides this, NodeJs also supports functional, event-driven, sub/pub programming paradigms, concurrency-oriented, and object-oriented programming languages. While AngularJS supports event-driven, functional, and object-oriented programming languages.

6. Core Architecture

NodeJs is a cross-platform environment that is based on Google’s V8 JavaScript engine. It is a framework written using various languages like C, C++, JavaScript. On the other hand, AngularJs is a product of Google. It is developed as a web app development framework that follows syntax rules. This framework is written using JavaScript.

To Wrap Up With — AngularJs is a popular client-side framework & NodeJS is a well-known runtime environment!

AngularJs and NodeJs are both open-source platforms. AngularJS is used to create single-page client-side web apps. While NodeJS is used to develop server-side apps. Both these can be combined with isomorphic web apps, but they have their own architectures. One can not say that one of these is better than the other one as both these frameworks focus on creating different applications. Therefore, it’s all about choosing the right technology that suits your application type and hiring the best AngularJS or NodeJS development company.