Can node.js be used as a framework for running arbitrary server-side Javascript in web applications?

Question

Can node.js be used as a general framework for running server-side Javascript specifically for web applications, totally unrelated to it's non-blocking and asynchrouns I/O functionality? Specifically I want to know if I can run arbitrary Javascript on the (web) server without using the other node.js functionality.

Answer 1

Yes, it's possible to use node.js for command-line applications, for example:

$ cat hello.js
console.log('Hello world!');
$ node hello.js
Hello world!

It's essentially just like any scripting language in this regard.

Answer 2

Yes. There are many web frameworks built on node. The most known is Express based on Connect .

Connect takes the familiar concepts of Ruby's Rack and applies it to the asynchronous world of node

Express:

High performance, high class web development for Node.js

But I/O - web request for example - depends on node's asynchronous and non-blocking functionality.

Answer 3

In the end, "node.js" is inside a v8 runtime environment, so you can of course execute arbitrary Javascript code. However, due to it's singe-processed design, it may be difficult to run multiple CPU-intensive computations in parallel. That is not what node.js has been designed for.

Answer 4

Yes. What is important to understand is that Node is a set of I/O bindings (file, TCP, etc) that layers on top of Chrome's V8 JavaScript interpreter.

You can use Node in two modes:

1. Execute a known JavaScript file

   $ node some_script.js
   

2. Execute in REPL (interactive mode)

   $ node
   

   var i = 1;
   console.log(i);
   1