Once the most misunderstood language of the web has now become the top language when it comes to the most number of repositories hosted on Github. Yes, Javascript is the topic of discussion in this article. Javascript, a language that emerged twenty years ago, and software developers often doubted that it would fade away in future, but the language has stood the test of time, and now one can build a complete web application using only Javascript.
One of the main reasons for the popularity of Javascript is the number of frameworks written in this language, either it is about painting, drawing something on screen, using Ruby like array functions in Javascript, building front-end of your application using MVC(Model View Controller) pattern, Javascript frameworks are always there to help you build the stuff on top of the functionality that has already been written by fellow developers, and thus saving you a lot of time.
In this article, you will get to know three of the famous frameworks that are a popular choice for programmers who want to write web applications in Javascript.
- AngularJS
- Node.js
- Meteor.js
AngularJS:
Oldest of all, it first appeared in 2009, and since then, it is being used for developing single page web applications. AngualrJS is lightly based on MVC pattern i.e. you divide your application into three components called Models, Views, and controllers. Models are related to data and its business logic, Views are used for presentation – the user interface of your application and Controllers are used to hook the two pieces together.
One of the core features of AngualrJS is its two-way binding. Often, you will find this thing in an Angular application that some input fields are tied to certain elements in DOM, and as an input field changes through some events, the element that it is tied to, reflects the behavior immediately. It would take a lot of code if we were to write the same functionality in core Javascript or even using jQuery.
AngularJS is currently maintained by Google and a community of developers. You can find more information about it angularjs.org.
NodeJS:
Javascript is now no more a scripting language that was once used to add behavior to a web application. Now, you can write a complete web application that delivers dynamic content, and saves the changes in the database, all this and other functionality can be implemented by using just Javascript. Yes, Javascript has gone outside of the browser, and now is touching the limitless sky.
NodeJS uses Google V8 Javascript engine to execute code. It is famous for its capability called non-blocking I/O API. Unlike languages like PHP and Python, where the code executes in a sequential order i.e. one command can execute only if the previous command has been executed, NodeJS is non-blocking language, that implies that commands can execute in a parallel fashion.
You can find more information about NodeJS at its official site located at http://nodejs.org.
MeteorJS:
MeteorJS is another web application framework written in Javascript using NodeJS. MeteorJS allows for rapid prototyping and integrates well with MongoDB, a NoSQL database that is efficient for large scale web applications.
MeteorJS uses observer pattern or what one calls a publisher-subscriber pattern, in which different components of a web application are subscribed to an observer, and if anything happens in the observer, the change gets reflected in all the subscribers.
MeteorJS is great if you want to build a web application in which the data needs to be changed instantly across all the clients. If one client modifies the data on the server, the change appears to all the other clients without having them to reload/refresh the page, and you can do all this by writing a very small amount of code.
Under the hood, MeteorJS takes advantage of jQuery: a popular open-source Javascript library used for common tasks. You can find more information about MeteorJS at http://meteor.com
