Ask HN: In what scenarios use of node.js can be useful? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: In what scenarios use of node.js can be useful?

20 pointsanujkk21 comments

I am looking for possible use cases of node.js.

How is it being used right now? Are you using node.js in any of your project? What new can be done using node.js?

I'm building a streaming HTML5 Twitter client called Denby: http://www.hellodenby.com/

(Although the hosted version is currently in closed alpha, you can check out progress on GitHub.)

If you want something more Tweetie than TweetDeck, check out Streamie: http://streamie.org/

Use node for anything that has a HTML(5) front end. The big win is that you no cognitive disconnect between the client-side and server-side code. The productivity increase is significant.

All the async event goodness (which is great for streaming of course) is just icing on the cake.

It's useful for streaming large data sets, such as audio or video files.

Here are some examples:

http://debuggable.com/posts/streaming-file-uploads-with-node...

http://blog.new-bamboo.co.uk/2009/12/7/real-time-online-acti...

http://blog.andregoncalves.com/post/1620276144/inaugural-twi...

I'm using node.js for a personal project: http://boxsocial.fm

The site reads and writes to last.fm in the background and pushes updates to client's browsers while doing so.

I'm sure it would have been possible to write it using some other technology but node.js just made it so easy. Also, writing the entirety of the app in just one language was an additional bonus.

I'm excited about building something bigger with it soon.

Is this alternative client for last.fm? I wonder how useful developing alternative clients can be apart from learning purposes. I have seen a lot of twitter clients coming up. Do users really care about using these?

To some extent. It copies a user's scrobbles/now playing info to one or more other users' profiles. So if a bunch of you are in the same room listening to music you can all scrobble at the same time.

That said, it was mainly written to get to grips with node. As well as to scratch a personal itch, obviously.

The biggest advantage I see from my experience with node.js is that you can code in just one language from the client side to server side. Of course, server side JavaScript is _not_ exactly the same as in client side - but for most part, that does not get in the way and the language basics remain the same.

It also helps that it scales well for the traditional web apps, and currently there is a huge momentum behind it, and an active community working on it.

The great thing about node.js is the flexibility it provides. It isn't what Rails is to Ruby or Django is to Python, really it is a way for Javascript to interact with the OS outside of the browser, e.g. on servers. This versatility leads to a ton of options, which many don't even focus on the web. With that in mind, know that using node.js is more than building a web app, it has given us slick tools to do things that in other languages or options would be painful or annoying.

Here is a good list of things that should be done: http://blog.nodejitsu.com/ten-node-apps-that-need-to-exist

I personally have made simple tools with it, like a desktop image uploader, or a cli gist (github) maker. I enjoy how easy it is to connect many different technologies together with very little effort.

These are some really interesting ideas.

"A browser based real-time multiuser sketchpad" - It made me think if it is possible to develop a collaborative, online, vector graphics design tool. Not a heavy application like Illustrator but something like light version of InkScape that can help in quick and easy graphic design for web such as logos, buttons etc.

I use node.js to power my domain name generator:

http://impossibility.org/

It runs queries against a pool of lookup servers and aggregates/returns the results in real time. I'm also using it as a fast, low footprint HTTP server.

Loggly uses it for handling large amounts of web POSTs and translating them into syslog like TCP packers which are sent to our indexers.

Basically it can be treated like a big ol' expensive load balancer, except its not expensive.

I'm using node for all my new web development.

It has an awesome community, and by that I mean: awesome package manager, awesome packages/libraries, actively maintained and developed.

How do you handle things like form/model validation?

https://github.com/dandean/express-form and https://github.com/caolan/forms are two good options. Out-of-the-box validation for model-based forms is a little bit trickier — there are many persistence options and each has their own way of doing things, which isn't always model-based.

Node doesn't have "batteries" out of the box.

This is a good thing. All the batteries are provided by the community and made available through the package manager 'npm'

I just asked a few folks on how they were using node.js, check it out here:

http://bostinnovation.com/2011/01/15/who-is-using-node-js-an...

I used node.js to make a drum machine that multiple people can play with at once: http://jambox.us (requires Safari/Chrome)

didn't work for me :( - two macbooks running chrome/safari

A little chat, a little soundcloud, a little ge.tt, sophisticated privacy management... and you get http://secretsocial.com ... a node project.

Nice. I liked the video. Is beta available?

Thanks Anuj! Very soon. Sign up / Tweet and you'll be invited.

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