Why choose Node.JS over PHP in Web Development

Nowadays so many technologies coming on the market but in that some are very popular and some not got their life so from those some popular technologies two are Node.js and PHP.

PHP is already getting very popular but Node.js is its competitor So, now we will see in which way Node.js we can use for the web development over the PHP. Some major and minor features of Node.js we will see below:

Node.js installation:

Following example installation of node.js in Mac, Linux, and Windows operating systems:

Mac

1. Install Xcode.
2. Install git.

3. Run the following commands:

darwin_setup.sh
git clone git://github.com/ry/node.git
cd node
./configure
make
sudo make install

Ubuntu

1. Install the dependencies:

sudo apt-get install g++ curl libssl-dev apache2-utils
sudo apt-get install git-core

2. Run the following commands:

git clone git://github.com/ry/node.git
cd node
./configure
make
sudo make install

Windows

1. Install Cygwin.
2. Use setup.exe in the Cygwin folder to install the following packages:

devel → OpenSSL
devel → g++-gcc
devel → make
python → python
devel → git

3. Open the Cygwin command line with Start > Cygwin > Cygwin Bash Shell.

4. Run the below commands to download and build node.

git clone git://github.com/ry/node.git
cd node
./configure
make
sudo make install

After that, you are ready to run the javascript on the server side.

Building and Migrating website:

The Node.js mainly runs on the commands only so we don’t have to perform coding for the moving the website from one server to another which is not time-consuming and which also helps to make the development time lesser as compared to PHP.

Context Switches:

PHP uses the LAMP technology i.e. Linux, Apache, Mysql and PHP developers have to be in master at least any two from these four within PHP and MySQL is mandatory and HTML, CSS, and JavaScript are omnipresent for making the web development with PHP but in another hand if you choose to make the development with Node.js is less context switches, because together with MongoDB, this stack can operate only in one language JavaScript! that makes Node.js easy to learn, understand and familiar with developers and web development.

Node.js is functionally similar to the PHP + Apache or ASP + IIS stacks.

Frameworks:

It’s very important to learn the libraries and its tools to get the complete knowledge which will help in web development.

PHP has many frameworks like Laravel, Yii, Codeigniter, CakePHP, Zend in other hand Node.js have fewer frameworks its full stack MVC framework is Meteor and Derby are such strong framework that showing the way to future for the development.

Real Time apps:

For PHP, there is still Node.js dependent Elephant.io and some other approaches and some libraries and tools are there.

The problem with PHP is that Apache and ISS which runs on the PHP as Module so without Apache/ ISS you can’t run the PHP project in other hand Node.js is just breeze with the Node.js stack of the Stock.io library, Express.js framework and Handlebars reactive template engine.

Real-time apps building with the Node.js is taken one step further by combining user end and server end coding.

Database Apps:

PHP has a long relationship with the relational database like MySQL, SQL Server, Oracle etc. but its execution is not as much faster as the Node.js.

As we all know Node.js runs have natural relation NoSQL Database like MongoDB which faster execution as compare to the relational SQL. So Node.js and NoSQL databases are perfect for cloud computing, prototyping and agile projects.

Running multiple Node.js on one server:

If you look for the Php to run the multiple projects on one server and if the server is not of good configuration then it will slow down the system and sometimes also user gets their information in late time but with Node.js it’s not like this.

You can run the multiple Node.js apps on the single server without any late reply or much time execution so if you like to run the multiple projects on the same server then you should only go with the Node.js.

Performance:

PHP is relatively fast but due to its use file system, database, and third-party requests, it fails miserably in comparison with Node.js, for example when FaceBook reached its scalability limit with PHP, they wrote and extremely fast c++ library and the virtual machine which they called HipHop VM to make Facebook faster access.

In another hand, Node.js is extremely fast due to its non-blocking I/O mechanism and Google Chrome V8 engine technology.

In the Last Word:

PHP is an outstanding technology to make the project which comes from its ease of learning and its use, uses LAMP only in all frameworks and most important open source technology.

But in this days world of technology got many languages to make the development but Node.js got its own popularity.

Node.js is very fast due to its fast execution due to it’s nonblocking I/O mechanism and It’s very efficient and in building real-time, NoSQL oriented and scalable systems. That’s the reason that many developers moving towards the Node.js for the web development.

In my opinion there no comparison require in PHP vs Node.JS in Web Development because each language has the expertise, advantages and disadvantages based on there uses.