Understanding Node.js
Cory Gackenheimer · Apress eBooks · 2013
Node.js is a server-side framework useful for building highly scalable and fast applications. Node.js is a platform that is built on v8, the JavaScript runtime that powers the Chrome browser designed by Google. Node.js is designed to be great for intensive I/O applications utilizing the nonblocking event-driven architecture. While Node.js can serve functions in a synchronous way, it most commonly performs operations asynchronously. This means that as you develop an application, you call events with a callback registered for handling the return of the function. While awaiting the return, the next event or function in your application can be queued for execution. Once the first function completes, its callback event is executed and handled by the function call that invoked the callback. This event-driven processing is described in Node.js’s very own definition: These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.