Web development is an ever-changing landscape. There are new tools and technologies made available every few years in order to churn out some of the best dynamic websites. With the increasing number of tools and technologies, the developers are offered more tools to work with and make the websites even better. But the developers also face the dilemma of which technology to make use of and when to use it.
Every website is different. With every new website to develop, the developers are faced with challenges as every website has its own requirements, be it the design, the working or the overall idea of how to build that design. With changing requirements, developers need to be sure of which application to use and in which situation. Out of all the other options, PHP and Node.js are two of the most favourable options for building a modern website. But the difficult task is choosing the one that suits better.
While PHP is an older scripting language designed to build, Node.js is a recently designed environment for building highly scalable web applications. Both the technologies will have its pros and cons. But in the recent times, with the increase in demand of highly scalable and quality websites, Node.js has been preferred more than PHP, in many cases. We are not saying Node.js is the best. It will also have its own pros and cons.
Pros of using Node.js
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Server-Side Solution. Node.js creates non-blocking I/O applications which can easily serve multiple concurrent events. A developer can easily create a highly scalable server-side solution which maximises the usage of a single CPU.
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Single Language. One of the best parts of Node.js is that it uses a single language across app development stack. This is favourable because making use of a single language on both front-end and back-end will only improve the functionality of your app.
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Flexible. Node.js is one of the most flexible platforms. There are very few guidelines and dependencies while using Node.js. There are no strict rules while using Node.js.
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Complexity. Node.js is not too complex to use. But it still requires more lines of coding. It also requires the developer to have an understanding of closures and callback functions.
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Using JSON. PHP doesn’t use JSON as much as Node.js. PHP mainly uses json_encode[] and json_decode[] functions. JSON will work better in the case of Node.js.
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Execution Speed. PHP is much slower compared to Node.js. While Node.js is not just faster compared to PHP, but it is also lightweight.
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Web Server. PHP will require Apache web server to run. Whereas Node.js does not need a web server. It will run on its own runtime environment.
Cons of using Node.js
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Not efficient in handling CPU-intensive apps. Being an event-based and a single threaded environment, Node.js is not suitable because it is not efficient enough to handle CPU-intensive apps. Generating audio, video, or editing graphics etc are some concurrent requests which cannot be managed by Node.js.
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Not mature enough. Node provides the developers with the access to a bunch of third-party modules already developed by the community. But this entire ecosystem is still pretty immature. The bugs and inconsistent version makes it unsuitable for the maintaining team.
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Simplicity. Compared to Node.js, PHP is pretty simple. PHP only has the right amount of complexity for creating an application that is not too complex.
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No client app required. Simply shipping the data in HTML form works more than anything else. PHP is designed to create that. This is one case where PHP can be more useful than Node.js.
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Speed of Coding. Most developers feel that PHP is faster for creating web apps. But when it comes to putting together a project quickly, PHP is definitely the best choice.
Which One is Better for Your App?
The point you need to consider as to which framework to choose is to determine the kind of application you need to develop. Both Node.js and PHP have their pros and cons. Node.js is new compared to PHP and so it will definitely have some functionalities which are not present in PHP like asynchronous and event-based architecture. This makes it suitable for real-time applications in which many requests take place concurrently. Node.js is also perfect for application which involve dynamic, highly flexible, and heavy client-side functionality.
