Choosing between Node.js and PHP for backend development

In this article, we will discuss PHP and Node.js: two popular backend technologies for web applications. We’ll discuss the key differences between them to help you choose the right backend technology for your next project.

Introduction

First, let’s understand what these two back-end technologies are and their uses.

PHP

PHP is the recursive abbreviation of PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor. It's a recursive abbreviation, so the first "P" actually stands for PHP! But originally, it referred to the personal homepage tool. It was founded in 1994 by Rasmus Lerdorf.

According to PHP official documentation:

PHP is a widely used open source general-purpose scripting language that is particularly suitable for web development and can be embedded in HTML.

PHP is a server-side (back-end) scripting language, so the code written in the PHP file is executed on the server. The PHP engine on the web server converts all code written in PHP into HTML, and the resulting web page contains only HTML code when sent to the client for rendering in the user's browser.

PHP is primarily used for building web-based applications. You can use PHP to build a variety of web applications, which may range from a personal blog to a full-blown enterprise application.

Since its inception, PHP has continued to evolve as a programming language. With every new major version, it adds new features and rewrites existing features to improve overall performance. As of now, the latest stable version is PHP 7, which brings significant improvements over previous versions.

Node.js

Node.js is a relatively new thing compared to PHP. Originally written by Ryan Dahl in 2009, Node is a JavaScript-based backend technology.

According to official documentation:

Node.js is an open source, cross-platform backend JavaScript runtime environment that runs on the V8 engine and executes JavaScript code outside of the web browser.

If you are a traditional back-end developer, you probably use JavaScript as the client-side language to perform tasks such as form validation, AJAX calls, DOM manipulation, etc. However, Node allows you to run JavaScript server-side, which opens up a lot of opportunities to unleash the power of JavaScript as a programming language.

Node is asynchronous and essentially follows an event-driven non-blocking model. This makes highly multi-threaded applications such as web servers more efficient and significantly improves load times. Furthermore, it is one of the most important architectural changes compared to other backend programming languages ​​that execute code synchronously.

Since its inception, Node has become one of the most popular back-end technologies. When developers use front-end frameworks and libraries like React, AngularJS, Backbone.js, etc., most of the time they prefer Node as the back-end language. This relieves the burden of coding the front-end and back-end parts of the application in separate languages. This way, frontend and backend can even use the same modules and libraries. Similar to the LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, and PHP) stack popular for building PHP websites, the MEAN (MongoDB, Express, AngularJS, and Node.js) stack is used for Node-powered websites.

In the next section, we will discuss several key differences between Node.js and PHP.

PHP and Node.js

In this section, we will compare PHP and Node.js based on different parameters.

1. Concurrency: Synchronous and Asynchronous

Generally speaking, PHP is synchronous in nature, so it executes code line by line. When the PHP code executes, it waits for the current line to complete before moving to the next line, blocking the request.

Node.js, on the other hand, is asynchronous in nature, so the code does not wait for I/O operations to complete execution. To handle slow operations like I/O or remote data retrieval, Node uses callbacks, promises, or JavaScript’s built-in async and await keywords. This makes Node.js very fast and allows the Node server to easily handle large numbers of connections.

2. Runtime environment: Zend engine and V8 JavaScript engine

PHP runs on the Zend Engine, an open source scripting engine that interprets PHP code.

Node.js is an open source, cross-platform backend JavaScript runtime environment that runs on Google’s V8 JavaScript engine.

3. Package managers: Composer and NPM

Package management is one of those gray areas in PHP that has been a topic of debate for years. There has never been a standard package manager that PHP developers can use to install reusable PHP libraries and components. PEAR is a widely used PHP package manager but can now be considered deprecated. However, through initiatives like PHP-FIG and Composer, the PHP community finally has a reliable system. Composer can be considered the standard package manager for PHP.

On the other hand, Node.js already provides NPM (Node Package Manager), a package management system. It's easy to use NPM to manage Node packages in your application. In fact, NPM has become the de facto standard for sharing reusable JavaScript components.

4. Supported frameworks

Since PHP has been one of the most popular programming languages ​​for building websites for over two decades, it’s no surprise that you can find many ready-made frameworks and systems you can use to build applications quickly and easily.

Laravel, CodeIgniter, and Symfony are a few examples of popular PHP web application frameworks, with Laravel probably being the most popular today. You'll also find open source PHP CMS systems like WordPress, Drupal, and Joomla, as well as e-commerce systems like Magento and WooCommerce, allowing you to build and launch web applications in no time.

As far as Node.js is concerned, there are a staggering number of libraries and frameworks. The JavaScript ecosystem is known for evolving frameworks at a dizzying pace. Express is one of the most popular Node frameworks - it can do everything, but it doesn't come with training wheels. Hapi is similar in approach to Express - it's a flexible, catch-all framework that doesn't offer a lot of default functionality out of the box.

Sails.js takes a different approach. The idea is like Ruby on Rails—many default behaviors make it easy to build MVC applications. Like Sails, Meteor makes it easy to set up an MVC application backend. However, Meteor goes a step further and integrates many front-end features, making it a true full-stack framework.

Finally, Next.js is an emerging framework specifically designed to work with React applications. Next makes it easy to create React applications with server-side rendering and other optimizations. NuxtJS is like Next...but for Vue applications.

5. database

Traditionally, PHP is used with relational database systems (RDBMS) such as MySQL, PostgreSQL, MS SQL, etc. Among them, MySQL is the most popular database for building PHP websites. As we discussed before, it is part of the popular open source stack LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, and PHP). Having said that, it is also possible to use NoSQL databases like MongoDB with PHP.

Node.js works best with NoSQL databases like MongoDB and CouchDB. It can also use SQL databases, but most developers prefer NoSQL databases using Node.js. With built-in JSON support, Node.js works very well with NoSQL databases. MongoDB is the most common choice, the M in MEAN.

6. performance

As we discussed before, Node.js is asynchronous in nature, and therefore, it has excellent performance on tasks with a large number of connections or a lot of time-consuming I/O or network operations. However, it is important to note that Node.js is single-threaded by default, so a CPU-intensive operation in one request will block all connections to the server until completed.

What should you choose for your next project?

After briefly discussing the basics of PHP and Node.js and their differences, you are faced with a tough question. What will you choose for your next project? This question is not easy to answer because it really depends on many different parameters.

Over the years, we have seen PHP used to build a wide range of applications, which may range from personal blog sites to full-blown enterprise-level applications. Typically, we use PHP to build applications that don't interact much with other servers and don't use client-side JavaScript frameworks. One of the main factors that may determine PHP usage is whether you want to use a CMS or framework built with PHP: such as WordPress or Laravel.

Node.js, on the other hand, is useful for building applications that handle real-time data and must be faster and scalable. Use cases such as chat applications, real-time statistics display applications, and logging applications are ideal candidates for implementation using Node.js. Apart from this, if you are building an SPA (Single Page Application) that is highly interactive with the server and gets most of the data through APIs, Node.js should be your first choice.

Also, if you are going to use front-end technologies like React, AngularJS, or Vue.js, it is best to use Node.js as the backend. Being able to use the same language on both front-end and back-end is really useful. The JavaScript and Node ecosystems are designed to support the use of the same language across the entire stack.

So you need to carefully check the requirements of your application and decide whether PHP or Node is best for you!

in conclusion

PHP and Node.js are two popular backend technologies used to power many applications on the web. In this article, we discuss their basics as well as their main differences. I hope this article helps you decide on backend technology for your next project!

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