Category: News

Nodesource Node.js Binary Distributions 2021 & 2022

Posted on by Simon Helberg

NodeSource Node.js binary downloads keep increasing monthly, providing millions of users worldwide with the power of Node.js. This blog post gives us important insights into using Node.js across Linux environments and the Node.js community in general.

Nodesource has been packaging and distributing Node.js for Linux environments for 9 years. Every major and minor release, as well as security updates. We’ve seen a massive increase in downloads every year. While we don’t distribute every version of Node.js, most of the downloads in Linux environments are provided by us.

Have you ever wondered how many people still use Node.js version?
Which countries consume Node.js the most?
What versions and distributions are the most popular?
What are the downloads of Node.js month by month?
Are they increasing, or are people moving away toward other technologies?

Let’s find out!

Get the awesome infographic here!
Node.js Binary Downloads

Note: If you want to compare, you can read Node by Numbers 2020 here.

In this article, you can find interesting data about the consumption of Node.js worldwide. the trends, spikes, and odds of the usage of the popular runtime that powers millions of applications.

These are the points to be discussed in this article:

Intro
A bit of History
Process: How is a new release created?
How does the distribution process work?
Stats!
Recent distributions supported
Traffic Peaks
Getting Involved
Conclusions

Introduction

First, let’s start with the basics:

_What is a binary distribution?
_

A binary distribution is a software package containing executables, binaries, or programs ready to be executed. In this case, it will be Node and NPM compiled executables.

_In what consists of the ‘Nodesource Node.js Binary Distributions’
_

Maintains availability and allows the usage of Node.js in production for the Linux community.
If you are installing Node.js in production on a Linux platform, there is a big chance that you are using NodeSource Node.js Binary Distributions.

why is this important?

Well, NodeSource Node.js binary distributions was downloaded over 90 million times worldwide last year. There are 90 million times people have been able to use, learn, and interact with Node.js thanks to this project.

Last month, it was downloaded +11 million times, and millions of applications and web pages are using it. Because of its availability, it has proven over the years to be the best source of installation and extensive use of Node.js packages in Linux, allowing the expansion of its use in the market.

_What kind of distributions are supported?
_

So right, as you can see, we support major Debian, Ubuntu, Redhat, CentOS, and Fedora releases and many different distributions based on those. As you can see, the list can’t go long, but we are always trying to add more there.

Also, if you are using code as infrastructure, the major recipes, formulas, or plugins that include Node.js installation usually work using Binaries distributions.

So if you’re using:

__Ansible__: https://galaxy.ansible.com/

__Chef__: https://supermarket.chef.io/

__Puppet__: https://forge.puppet.com/modules/puppet

__Salt__: https://github.com/saltstack-formulas/node-formula

You are already using binary distributions, and it is recommended to use the Node.js installer. That’s what the NPM documentation and the NodeJS official documentation say. So it’s proven to be the best source of installing these sectors.

A bit of History of Node.js Binary Distributions

_How NodeSource get involved in this project?
_

So, here are some essential milestones for the project:

It started with Chris Leajoining NodeSource in 2014.

Initially supporting Debian and Ubuntu with Node.js V12.

Added support for RHEL, Centos, Fedora, Oracle Linux, and Amazon Linux.

A script was created to ease the setup process. Later we created a script to make the installation process more manageable because you have to add the PPA manually. Now everything is automated!

Io.js was born and immediately supported.

In 2018 we started delivering Node.js in snap packages. A compatible format with multiple Linux distributions that you can use.

Since then, we have expanded support for many compatible Linux Distributions.

We support OpenJS Foundation and the Node.js project doing the same with every LTS and stable release the Node.js project has released.

Now let’s talk about how a new release is created.

Process – How is a new release in Node.js created

There are two processes involved when releasing a new version of Node.

The first comes from the node project itself.
The second is from the nodes or Node.js binaries distributions for the Linux operating system.

So it’s helpful to understand how the release lines work. All the releases are scheduled and planned. There are three stages on a Node version: Current, LTS, and the end of life.

Current NodeJS release line in the graph is colored green, as we can see here. And this space lasts for six months, from April to October.

LTS is an acronym for long-term support and is applied to release lines that will be supported and maintained by the Node.js project for an extensive period. LTS divides into two active and maintenance; Active is the blue, as we can see here. Maintenance is gray. Active is the one that lasts for 18 months. Maintenance is a release line that is the end of life. That means it will no longer be maintained and will not be patched with any known security vulnerability. When the version reaches the end of its life, it is very affectable to upgrade. The whole process lasts for three years.

Also, there are three types of releases:

Major release that is for incompatible API changes from version to version. A major release can also include changes that would normally be included in minor or patch releases.

Minor releases there include backward-compatible functionality changes.

Patch releases include nonbreaking bug fixes and security patches.

So every new LTS is a major release. This is the process for delivering a new version of Node.js.

How the release happens inside NodeSource

We already understand how a version is created. So, every time a new version is released, everything starts from Nodesource Slack. We already have an integration that notifies in a unique channel that a new version is available, so we have to get to work and update to a recent version. We also have some automation that makes our life easier: We have a bot, or infrastructure bot, called __Control Tower__. It’s something we use internally for all everything in our infrastructure.

Control Tower allows us to run a single command to generate a new version that will communicate with different pipelines we have in AWS called pipelines. And that will use AWS code build to build the package and all the packaging, generating all the different binaries we need to distribute Debian, rpm, and other formats.

After building those, it will push to Amazon’s S3 bucket, and from there, we will have an origin server that will serve all these packages for everybody in the world. That’s how it works.

It’s a semi-automated process with a lot of automation involved! Now, let’s see some fascinating statistics involved in this project.

Node by Numbers 2021 & 2022

NodeSource NodeJS binary execution was downloaded over 98,420,550 million times worldwide last year (2021), and the total download from this year from January to October is 80,442,890 million (2022).

This graph is a monthly download in terabytes 1TB. This year it was 2,135 TB of binaries distributions from January to October.

There is a noticeable increase in the tendency of downloads, and this year the downloads are even more remarkable. In just one year, the increase was about 4,7% in downloads.

2021 – 2,088.73 TB

2022 – 2,135.98 TB

Again, this is a lot of data, and we expect these numbers to keep increasing as the Node project expands.

Now we are going to analyze the numbers by version. This is very important. Let’s take a look.

As you can see, people are still getting old versions like V6, which was deprecated. Then we have V8 and V10 with a few people; others are using V12 and V14, and some are using V15 and V16. Now let’s go to analyze the current status.

So this is 2022, and as you can see, many people still use V12. But the good news is that most people are using V14 and v16. We can expect V18 to start growing, as it became LTS at the end of October, and it’s the latest LTS we support.

If you want to try these things on production, it’s really good to use stable versions; we always recommend using in production the latest LTS. Please read this article to understand why it is important and useful to try Node.js V18 LTS.

Now let’s see where those downloads are happening worldwide and where people consume Node.js most.

The top five countries consuming Node.js binary distributions between 2021 and 2022 were the US, Germany, France, the UK, Ireland, and the Netherlands.

In 2022 the top five countries were:
– United States 60.9%
– Germany 9.3%
– France 3.6%
– United Kingdom & Ireland 3.3%
– Netherlands 2.0%

Many South American countries consume binaries, including Brazil, Mexico, Argentina, and Colombia. The only African country on the list is South Africa. Let’s hope more countries keep using the amazing Node.js project! 💪

Traffic Peaks

As we can see in this image, at the end of October of this year, 2022, there was a release, reaching Oct 25 with Node 18 12,185 downloads, and every time there’s a new release in Node.js, there is a peak in downloads of binaries distributions.

October 18th – Node V19

October 25th – Node V18 LTS

For Node V19 we started having downloads on October 19 with 1,594 downloads that day.

__Note__: If you want to be aware of the important dates of the project, here you can consult the: Node.js Project Calendar

Recent distributions supported by NodeSource

Two types of deprecations could happen in our channels:

__When a Node version reaches the End Of Life__, which means you will not receive any security updates or book patches in the future. We always recommend that you stay in the currently supported version. One important thing to note is that we do not remove the old packages. Even if you use a pre-owned node version, you can still use NodeSource binaries distribution.

__When Linux Distribution goes End Of Life__, be aware that this is not a good practice because your Linux distribution, your operating system, is no longer receiving any security updates or support. So we always recommend keeping a proper maintenance version of your operating system (We do not remove the old packages).

Note: Check the ‘End-of-Life Releases’ HERE.

Please update your Node.js, or you will see this thing when you’re installing the Node.js version that you are trying to install. We always present this Deprecation warning, and we make you wait 20 seconds so you can read the message and realize that maybe you should be updating your Node.js version.

Today, many people are using no longer supported versions. About 46% of downloads of Node.js versions were no longer supported. We want to launch a campaign encouraging developers to upgrade their node version. #UpgradeYourNodeVersion

Behind the Data

There is still a surprising amount of downloads of outdated versions in 2021 (39%) and in 2022 (46%) – People should upgrade!

The downloads are focused mostly in the Americas and Europe (86,9%) in 2021 and were the same in 2022, and some regions are severely underrepresented, for example, Africa. The Middle East in 2022 is increasing the downloads.

The most downloaded versions in 2022 were version 14 for rpm and for deb (32% of Downloads). Followed by V12 with 26% of the downloads. Node V16 was downloaded 20%.

deb distributions are more consumed than rpm, as is expected.

In 2022, an exciting milestone was an increase of 13,6% in downloads of NodeSource Node.js Binaries Distributions. We expect continued growth in 2023.

Getting Involved

So, how can you get involved in this project? There are many ways to contribute.

First, you can go to this link: https://github.com/nodesource/distributions

In that link is the repository where the project is hosted, and you can submit an issue, comment, or pull request. And it’s related chiefly to supporting new distributions to upgrade a distribution or to create an update script to download a particular distribution.

Another way is to keep updated documentation. If a new version over distribution changes, it should also be updated on the docs. When you submit an issue or a pull request, suggestions could be made to keep it compatible with the rest of the distribution, and submissions are always working.

If you collaborate with this project for a few months, you can ask and be included in this repo as a collaborator 💪.

Conclusions

Using NodeSource Node.js distributions is the best and most recommended way to install Node.js in Linux for production environments.

NodeSource has delivered Node.js fresh to your Linux system via your package manager within hours, minutes, days, or weeks. For NodeSource, sustaining the community is essential because we want to support more people using Linux to have Node.js in production.

Also, we are looking for more community involvement in the project. So most of our scripts are open source, and as you can see, there’s a lot of activity in the report that we just mentioned in this article. Help will be appreciated! So if you have ideas or solutions or want to help us continue supporting open source, you can contribute to this GitHub Repo.

Please join us and be part of this magnificent project. Also, here are our channels to follow us and continue the conversation:

Twitter
LinkedIn
Github

As always, the best place to contact us is via our website or [email protected]

_Ready for more? _

If you are looking for NodeSource’s Enterprise-grade Node.js platform, N|Solid, please visit https://downloads.nodesource.com/, and for detailed information on installing and using N|Solid, please refer to the N|Solid User Guide.

We We also know that as a start-up, you want ‘Enterprise-grade’ at a startup price, this is why we extend our product to small and medium-sized companies, startups, and non-profit organizations with N|Solid SaaS.

Please help us to reach more people and support use cases in Node.js. We care about the Node.js community! 💚You’re welcome to explore, read, and participate in this project.

Useful Links / References

Octoverse 2022
2022 Developer Survey Stack Overflow

NODE.JS Retro 2022

Posted on by Simon Helberg

Node.js was the top technology used by professional developers in 2022

Stack Overflow’s annual Developer Survey confirmed our experience; Node.js continues to grow its use across the globe due to its scalability and performance as well as its ability to integrate seamlessly with a wide range of technologies and databases make it an ideal technology for businesses of all sizes.

The Node.js open-source project, a cross-platform JavaScript run-time environment built on Chrome’s V8 JavaScript engine, allows developers to use JavaScript to create web applications and serve data quickly, securely, and reliably. That’s why professional developers have adopted it broadly; it helps them in many web-development tasks like API development, streaming, and web and mobile applications as it is fully compatible with existing JavaScript libraries (the Top Language according to Github’s Octoverse Report, it can be used to create highly scalable and dynamic web or mobile applications.

Img 1: Stackoverflow 2022 survey

NodeJS on an Enterprise Level

Node.js excels at simplifying the development process for enterprises. It requires less code to execute tasks, allowing developers to focus on creating high-quality code rather than endless lines of coding. By utilizing asynchronous I/O and non-blocking event-driven input/output makes it lightweight and efficient for building real-time applications.

Img: Node.js Org Use Survey

Node.js is designed to handle high amounts of requests quickly and efficiently. Its architecture is based on a single-threaded, event-driven model that makes it very efficient at handling concurrent requests. This event-driven design allows Node to handle requests without the need for multiple threads. This makes Node.js applications highly scalable, as multiple requests can be served without additional resources or server hardware.

Additionally, Node.js supports streaming and event-based programming, which allows developers to build asynchronous applications. Asynchronous programming will enable applications to respond quickly to multiple requests without waiting for each request to finish before responding.

Therefore the performance of Node.js applications depends mainly on how well they are coded and optimized. Careful planning and optimizing the application code are essential to achieve high performance. Additionally, Node.js applications benefit from caching, clustering, and other optimization techniques. These techniques can help improve the performance and scalability of Node.js applications.

The number one request we get at NodeSource is to help developers and organizations improve the performance of their Node.js applications. It’s a key reason we built our product N|Solid, to provide the visibility and insights to help identify and resolve issues fast without adding overhead like other APMs (NodeSource Benchmark Tool). And why we offer Professional Services from our Node Experts to go a step further with Performance Audits and Training and Node.js Support.

Optimization techniques in Node.js

In our experience, the most common optimization techniques in Node.js are caching, minification, bundling, optimizing database queries, code splitting, using async functions, and using the Node.js cluster module. Here is a quick overview of each.:

Caching

Caching in Node.js helps improve performance by storing data in memory to be accessed quickly when needed. This helps reduce the time it takes to retrieve data from the server and helps reduce the number of requests needed to be made to the server. Caching also allows data to be stored more efficiently, which is helpful for applications with large amounts of data.

Minification

In Node.js reduces the size of code files and other resources by removing unnecessary characters, such as spaces, new lines, and comments, without altering the code’s functionality. Minifying code can help to enhance the performance of your Node.js applications by reducing download time and improving browser rendering speed.

Bundling

Is the process of combining multiple files or resources into one bundle, which typically has a smaller file size than when all files are separate. Bundling can reduce network latency as fewer requests are needed to retrieve data. It also helps improve application performance as the browser can cache a single large file instead of multiple small ones.

Optimizing database queries

In Node.js involves utilizing techniques such as indexing, query optimization, and caching to ensure that database queries are more efficient and run more quickly. Proper indexing can contribute to faster query times. In contrast, query optimization can reduce the time needed to process a query by ensuring that only the data required is requested from the database.

Code splitting

Is a technique to reduce the amount of code sent to the client when a web page is requested. Code splitting efficiently divides code into smaller bundles and only sends the necessary code to the user when needed. This helps improve web application performance, as the user only needs to download the relevant code for the requested page.

Async functions

In Node.js allow code to be run asynchronously, meaning that the code is not executed sequentially. Instead, asynchronous operations can be executed in parallel and execute operations concurrently. This allows the code to execute faster and in a more efficient way. Additionally, asynchronous functions provide better error-handling capabilities and allow greater control over the flow.

Use of the Node.js Cluster Module

The Node.js cluster module allows you to create a group of child processes (workers) that all share the same server port, making it easy to scale your application across multiple CPU cores. It also provides a powerful way to handle requests in a distributed manner and makes it easier to manage and monitor the performance of your application. The cluster also provides an API for sending messages between workers, allowing them to coordinate their activities.

In addition to these optimization techniques in Node.js, it is important to consider the best development practices in Node.js.

The best development practices in Node.js.for 2023

Img: https://xkcd.com/292/

The list includes, but is not less:

Utilizing the latest version of Node.js and ensuring it is regularly updated. For your production binaries, we recommend using our distribution packages (best maintained, documented, and most used production binaries -NodeSource Node.js Binary Distributions

Implementing modern patterns and techniques such as asynchronous programming and proper error handling.

Leveraging dependency management to reduce code complexity and ensure packages are up-to-date.

Adopting modular development practices to create easily reused and scaled components across projects.

Investing in automated testing to ensure quality and stability in the codebase.

Use security libraries to prevent common vulnerabilities and protect against data breaches.

Optimizing memory and resource usage to keep operating costs low.

And to comply with one or several of these good practices, it is essential to use an APM.

Using an Application Performance Monitoring (APM)

Using an Application Performance Monitoring (APM) tool to monitor your Node.js application lets you gain insights into application performance and identify issues quickly. Some popular APM tools for Node.js include New Relic, AppDynamics, Datadog and N|Solid. Each tool offers performance monitoring, error tracking, and real-time analytics features.

Note: Last year, we released for the community an open-source tool to compare the main APMs in Node.js; we invite you to contribute or use it in your work.

Selecting the right APM for Node.js will depend on the specific needs of your project. However (yes, we are biased 🙂), we believe N|Solid is the best APM for Node.js is the best APM for Node.js; because it provides developers with deeper insights and key integrations and adds security features no other APM can.

Conclusion:

Node.js is quickly becoming a popular choice for enterprise-level applications. With its lightweight architecture, scalability, and flexibility,
Node.js is an ideal language for businesses that need applications that can handle high traffic and complex data.
Node.js allows organizations to develop highly-customizable web applications that are secure, reliable, and perform well at scale.
Node.js also has a vibrant open-source community, allowing developers to easily find and use existing libraries and frameworks.

Are you creating a Node.js application?

Follow these simple steps:

Start by selecting a framework. Node.js has many available frameworks, such as Fastify, Hapi, or Koa. Choose the one that best fits the needs of your application.

Set up a package.json file to better manage your project’s dependencies.
Create a folder structure to organize the components of your application.
Structure your code into separate files as your application grows.
Write automated tests for your application.
Implement error handling for any unexpected issues.
Validate user input before handing it off to your application.
Utilize caching to improve performance.
Consider deploying
Use an APM and follow our diagnostic blog-post series (Remember that for Node.js, N|Solid is the recommended option 😉 ).

Good programming could help create a project exactly how you want. In NodeJS, there are so many open-source projects to take inspiration from.

— Wait for our list of projects and technologies in Node.js to keep an eye on in 2023 —

With services from a NodeJS expert company such as NodeSource, you could make the most of the technology’s robust features to achieve your web development goals. We will be happy to support you in your node.js journey!

Here are our channels to follow us and continue the conversation:
– Twitter
– LinkedIn
– Github.
As always, the best place to contact us is via our website or [email protected].

About N|Solid

N|Solid is an augmented version of Node.js that includes additional features such as security, performance monitoring, and enhanced debugging tools. It’s an excellent option for projects that require robust debugging and performance capabilities.

N|Solid v4.8.3 is now available

Posted on by Simon Helberg

NodeSource is excited to announce N|Solid v4.8.3 which contains the following changes:

Node.js v18.12.0 (LTS): Rebase of N|Solid on Node.js v18.12.0 (LTS)(see details below).

For detailed information on installing and using N|Solid, please refer to the N|Solid User Guide..

Changes

NodeSource is excited to announce N|Solid v4.8.3 which contains the following changes:

Rebase of N|Solid on Node.js v18.12.0 (LTS). This version of Node.js contains the following changes (see here for more details).

There are three available LTS Node.js versions for you to use with N|Solid, Node.js 16 Gallium, Node.js 14 Fermium and Node.js 18 Hydrogen.

N|Solid v4.8.3 Fermium ships with Node.js v14.20.1.

N|Solid v4.8.3 Gallium ships with Node.js v16.18.0.

N|Solid v4.8.3 Hydrogen ships with Node.js v18.12.0.

The Node.js 14 Fermium LTS release line will continue to be supported until April 30, 2023.

The Node.js 16 Gallium LTS release line will continue to be supported until September 11, 2023.

The Node.js 18 Hydrogen LTS release line will continue to be supported until April 30, 2025.

Supported Operating Systems for N|Solid Runtime and N|Solid Console

Please note that The N|Solid Runtime is supported on the following operating systems:

Windows:

Windows 10
Microsoft Windows Server 1909 Core
Microsoft Windows Server 2012
Microsoft Windows Server 2008

macOS:
macOS 10.11 and newer

RPM based 64-bit Linux distributions (x86_64):

Amazon Linux AMI release 2015.09 and newer
RHEL7 / CentOS 7 and newer
Fedora 32 and newer

DEB based 64-bit Linux distributions (x86_64, arm64 and armhf):

Ubuntu 16.04 and newer
Debian 9 (stretch) and newer

Alpine
Alpine 3.3 and newer

Download the latest version of N|Solid

You can download the latest version of N|Solid via http://accounts.nodesource.com or visit https://downloads.nodesource.com/directly.

New to N|Solid?

If you’ve never tried N|Solid, this is a great time to do so. N|Solid is a fully compatible Node.js runtime that has been enhanced to address the needs of the Enterprise. N|Solid provides meaningful insights into the runtime process and the underlying systems. Click here to start!

As always, we’re happy to hear your thoughts – feel free to get in touch with our team or reach out to us on Twitter at @nodesource.

2023 N|Solid Awards: The Top 10 Best Node.js Open Source Projects to Watch

Posted on by Simon Helberg

NodeSource has been a part of the Node.js ecosystem since 2014, contributing to the open-source project, distributing binaries (over 100m annually!), providing expert Node Services, and building tooling (N|Solid) to support developers to make the best software leveraging Node.js. Every year, we look at the open-source projects we believe are the most interesting and will impact the ecosystem. This year we decided to recognize each of these projects with an award, so welcome to the first installment of the N|Solid Awards!

As the technology has become more ubiquitous in recent years, the list of Node.js projects and technologies to keep an eye on in 2023 is growing longer. As champions of Node, we are excited to see the creativity of the developers using Node.js and the positive impact the technology has in the world.

Node.js, a JavaScript open-source runtime environment, has become one of the most popular platforms for developing applications. With the rapid rise of Node.js usage, developers are constantly pushing the boundaries of what’s possible with the platform. As a result, many open-source Node.js projects are available for everyone to tinker around with.

“JavaScript is everywhere, including in 98% of the world’s websites. Representing this enormous developer ecosystem is a humbling and awesome responsibility. The work of our maintainers matters, as they keep lavaScript safe and modern for those who depend on it.” – OpenJS Foundation

Before we get to the award winners, here. A quick list of the pros and cons of Node.js:

Pros and Cons of Node.js

The pros of Node.js include the following:

Flexibility – Node.js is designed to be used with many different types of applications;
Speed – Node.js is faster than other server-side languages;
Scalability – Node.js makes it easy to scale applications;
Great ecosystems – Node.js has a large and vibrant community of developers constantly building new libraries and tools;
Async I/O – Node.js is built on the concept of asynchronous I/O, which makes it great for handling multiple requests simultaneously.
Cost savings – Node.js can reduce hosting and maintenance costs.

The cons of Node.js include the following:

Single threading – Node.js is single-threaded, which can limit performance;
Compatibility issues – As Node.js is updated, older versions may not be compatible with newer libraries and frameworks;
Lack of debugging

Skilled professionals like experienced Node.js developers require tools to get their jobs done quickly and effectively. However, it can be challenging to make the right choice from the range of options available. Node.js is known for its strong community that offers many tools. Such additions have been instrumental in contributing to the success of modern apps. To help you narrow down your choices, here are some of the top open-source projects you should keep an eye on.

The Winners of the N|Solid Award for 2023!

Selected for the project’s importance and value and the team’s outstanding effort, here are 10 of the best open-source projects (in no particular order) worth keeping an eye on…

Fastify-vite
Mercurius
Platformatic
Next.js
Prisma
Redwood
Nuxt
Strapi
Herbs.js
PNPM

Fastify-vite

Fastify-Vite is a minimalistic web framework designed to build modern web applications quickly. It supports React and Vue at the moment, which means you can use the same familiar components, lifecycle hooks, and other patterns. With its lightning-fast performance, developers can quickly develop, test, and deploy web applications.

Note: And if you ask, Why is fastify-vite but no vite itself? Because according to our lead engineers, it “is a game-changer in SSR” (And if we wanted to present the top 10, well, we couldn’t go on, to be honest, 😅🤷‍♀️); however, we are fans of the great work done by this project, so here: Vite itself has a special mention in our list.

And if we talk about Vite, then we cannot leave the Fastify ecosystem aside.

Fastify

Fastify is an open-source web framework for Node.js that enables developers to create modern and efficient web applications quickly. It provides a great foundation to build the application logic while abstracting away much of the complexity associated with web development. Fastify has an extensive ecosystem of modules, plug-ins, and tools that can be used to improve the development process. These include web servers, logging, validation, authentication, security, routing, and more. With such a wide range of features, Fastify makes it easy to create secure, reliable, and performant web applications.

Mercurius

Mercurius is a Node. a js-based project focusing on bringing IoT to the edge. It is designed for distributed IoT devices and provides tools for connecting them to cloud services such as Amazon AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud Platform. It also supports real-time streaming, analytics, machine learning, and more. Mercurius provides an easy-to-use API that allows developers to quickly and easily interact with their devices. Furthermore, Mercurius is open-source and free to use, making it an ideal choice for developers who want to create innovative IoT solutions.

Platformatic

Platformatic project in Node.js is a powerful and scalable platform that enables businesses to quickly create, deploy, and manage sophisticated customer experiences using the power of AI. Node.js is used to incorporate custom logic into Platformatic’s interactive environment, allowing for a more tailored user experience for customers. Node.js is also used to provide faster performance and improved scalability across the platform, which is essential for powering high-volume customer interactions. With Node.js at its core, Platformatic project in Node.js delivers an efficient, robust, and secure customer experience.

Next.js

Next.js is an open-source project used to build server-side rendered React applications. It is based on the React framework and is a popular choice for developing single-page applications. It is easy to start with Next.js, as it handles the configuration and provides built-in features such as server-side rendering, static site generation, routing, code splitting, and much more. It also enables developers to start building apps quickly and efficiently while providing a range of customization options.

Prisma

Prisma is an open-source project that provides an ORM (Object Relational Mapping) for Node.js applications. It is designed to make it simpler and easier to interact with databases, reduce complexity and pain points in the development process, and help developers quickly build and deploy robust applications. Prisma provides automatic schema management, powerful data modeling, scalability, and high-performance querying.

Redwood

Redwood is a full-stack JavaScript framework for building web, mobile, and desktop applications. It allows you to rapidly use modern technologies like React, Node.js, GraphQL, and TypeScript to create powerful applications with an opinionated yet extensible architecture rapidly. With Redwood, you get the best of both worlds: the robustness and scalability of a full-stack framework and the flexibility and efficiency of a modern JavaScript stack.

Nuxt

Nuxt is an open-source project built on Vue.js and Node.js that provides an easy-to-setup framework for server-side-rendered (Universal) or Single Page Applications (SPA). It supports Vue components and allows developers to create custom projects from scratch or pre-made templates. Nuxt comes with integrated routing, code-splitting, and hot module reloading out of the box and also provides features such as custom layouts, meta tags management, and server middleware.

Strapi

Strapi is an open-source Node.js project that allows developers to create and manage their own API’s with ease. It provides a RESTful API structure and a customizable admin panel that will enable users to manage content and users easily. Additionally, it supports multiple databases and can be easily extended with plug-ins. Strapi provides an intuitive user experience and allows for rapid development of web applications.

Herbs.js

Herbs.js is a Node.js project that helps developers streamline the development process by allowing them to quickly and easily create Node.js applications with the help of various pre-defined tools, libraries, and modules. It provides a wide range of features, such as code syntax highlighting, modular components, integrated debugging and testing, and a streamlined build process. It also offers a convenient command-line interface for creating and managing a Node.js project.

PNPM

PNPM is an advanced package manager for node.js. It is optimized for performance and focuses on being a minimal footprint and making dependency resolution faster by creating a hard link, symlink, or cloning the dependencies into the local project. It also features an automated garbage collection system that detects and removes unnecessary packages. PNPM is designed to create reproducible and reliable builds. It utilizes a deterministic package-lock file to ensure that the same version of all required packages is installed on each machine.

Congratulations to the projects and their teams, you are doing truly incredible work, and we are excited to see what you do throughout the year! If you would like to nominate a project for the N|Solid Award, reach out to our community team at [email protected] and tell us why!

Why Choose N|Solid on top of Node.js?

Companies and developers looking for an enterprise-grade Node.js platform should consider N|Solid due to its superior performance and scalability. N|Solid delivers up to 10x better performance than most other Node.js production platforms and offers a range of tools to help developers scale their applications quickly and easily.

Additionally, N|Solid solves the problem of missing debugging capabilities, offering advanced insights, profiling capabilities, and real-time monitoring with built-in alerting, so developers can quickly identify and fix issues. It also includes a range of additional features, such as progressive deployments, automated patching, secure log data transmission, and more. Read about the top ten features in N|Solid here!

Conclusion

Node.js is a powerful platform that can help you create the project of your dreams. With plenty of open-source projects available, you can find solutions to develop exceptional applications. From the top ten NodeJS open-source projects, you have the opportunity to try out something new or contribute actively.

It is possible to get overwhelmed by all the options, but this is a fantastic opportunity to build and experiment with the tools you need.

Please help us to reach more people and support use cases in Node.js. We care about the Node.js community! Happy to connect with you on

Twitter

LinkedIn,

GitHub.

You’re welcome to explore, read, and participate in the Node.js Project.
We proudly support Node.js Binary Distributions since 2014. 💚

Vite 4.0 released

Posted on by Simon Helberg

#​618 — December 9, 2022

Read on the Web

JavaScript Weekly

Vite 4.0 Released — From the same creator as Vue.js, Vite is an exciting piece of frontend tooling offering lots of goodies out of the box: fast hot module replacement, instant server starts, optimized builds with Rollup, TypeScript and JSX support (more on why to use Vite here). You can even give it a quick spin online via vite.new.

Evan You and Vite Contributors

Anjana Vakil on the JavaScript Fundamentals — This video course covers the core skills needed to become a professional JavaScript programmer, including writing reusable code with functions, conditionals, fetching data from APIs, and more. It’s everything you need to continue your journey to become effective at JavaScript.

Frontend Masters sponsor

npm Gains New Security Features — GitHub continues its work in making the npm ecosystem safer. Two new things: granular access tokens so package owners can better control access to publishing workflows, and a new code explorer to look directly at the contents of packages from the official npm site.

Monish Mohan (GitHub)

Console Ninja: console.log Output Right Next to Your Code — A VS Code extension that displays console.log output and runtime errors next to your code. Jack Herrington recorded ▶️ a neat 6 minute intro showing it off recently.

Wallaby.js Team

IN BRIEF:

There’s a React documentary in production – ▶️ here’s the trailer.

AWS has unveiled Step Functions Distributed Map, a way you can run hugely parallel (up to 10,000 simultaneous executions) operations (written in JavaScript, perhaps) over data and documents stored on S3.

A quick look back 27 years to the launch of JavaScript in 1995.

📊 D3 7.7, the latest version of the popular data visualization framework, is out and I wanted to recommend looking at co-creator Mike Bostock’s notebooks if you want inspiration on using D3, a look at new features, etc. He posts interesting stuff.

The JS debugger in the latest VS Code release now supports console.profile for CPU profiling code, as well as nested sourcemaps.

RELEASES:

Rome 11 – Linter in urbe novissima sunt.

Storybook 7.0 beta 0

Rollup 3.7 – ES module bundler.

xv 2.0 – Zero-config Node test runner.

Nx 15.3 (A huge news update post.)

Ember 4.9

Bun 0.3 – The challenger JS runtime.

📒 Articles & Tutorials

Sandboxing with Partytown — Partytown provides a way to run third party scripts within a Web Worker rather than on the main thread. Could this be used for sandboxing? Weston tried it out and concluded it’s not quite there.

Weston Ruter

Build a Mobile-Responsive Telehealth Pager App Using Stream’s Chat API — Build a responsive chat app with emojis/reactions, built-in GIF support, ability to edit/delete messages, direct & group chat, and more.

Stream sponsor

Is Prisma Better Than Your ‘Traditional’ ORM? — Prisma has become a very popular ORM option in the Node space in recent years. The creator of the Practica Node starter app considers if Prisma makes sense as a universal ‘go to’ ORM. No, but..

Yoni Goldberg

When to Use gRPC vs GraphQL — A balanced comparison of two popular API protocols to see where each works best.

Loren Sands-Ramshaw

Breakpoints and console.log is the Past, Time Travel is the Future — 15x faster JavaScript debugging than with breakpoints and console.log, now with support for Vitest.

Wallaby.js sponsor

▶  A Discussion on Optimizing Your JavaScript with Rust — A chat with Vercel’s Lee Robinson at the recent Next.js conference.

Ben Popper podcast

🛠 Code & Tools

Codux: A Visual IDE for React — One of the co-founders of Wix introduces a new standalone tool to accelerate the React development process. It currently only supports Chromium-based browsers but you can take it for a test drive or learn more from its homepage.

Nadav Abrahami (Wix)

Harlem 3.0: Simple Extensible State Management for Vue 3 — Provides a simple functional API for creating, reading, and mutating state.

Andrew Courtice

Open Source Firebase Alternative for Web, Mobile, and Flutter Devs

Appwrite sponsor

JS Image Carver: Content-Aware Image Resizer and Object Remover — Uses the seam carving approach (if you’ve used ‘Content Aware Scale’ in Photoshop, you’ve seen it). The live demo on this one is fun to watch.

Oleksii Trekhleb

Civet: The CoffeeScript of TypeScript? — If you liked CoffeeScript back in the day, here’s the same idea in a modern TypeScript-oriented form.

Daniel Moore

Maska 2.1: Zero-Dependency Input Mask — Happy in vanilla situations, but can also integrate with Vue 2/3. GitHub repo.

Alexander Shabunevich

node-calls-python: Call Python from Node — One use case the author mentions is plugging into Python’s rich ecosystem of machine learning tools.

Menyhért Hegedűs

reduced.to: Open Source URL Shortening App Built with Qwik — The app itself is live at reduced.to but you might find it interesting as an example of a frontend built using the Qwik framework.

Ori Granot

📺 Yesterday, This Dot Media published Qwik’s creator Misko Hevery giving ▶️ a live coding introduction to Qwik – a useful way to get up to speed.

💻 Jobs

Software Engineer — Stimulus is a social platform started by Sticker Mule to show what’s possible if your mission is to increase human happiness. Join our engineering team.

Stimulus

Senior UI Dev — Join us and innovate with MicroFrontends, custom Node tools, build systems (Webpack/Github Actions), TypeScript, React, and more with a11y and DX in mind.

Vertex Inc

Find JavaScript Jobs with Hired — Create a profile on Hired to connect with hiring managers at growing startups and Fortune 500 companies. It’s free for job-seekers.

Hired

Spacetime 7.3
↳ Lightweight JavaScript timezone library.

Partytown 0.7.3
↳ Run intensive third-party scripts in a worker.

Splitter 1.4
↳ React component for split views.

reveal-md 5.4
↳ Reveal.js presentations from Markdown files.

Mongoose 6.8
↳ MongoDB object modeling library.

React Tooltip 5.0

A new jQuery release for Xmas

Posted on by Simon Helberg

#​619 — December 16, 2022

Read on the Web

🎄 This is the final issue of the year – we’ll be back on January 6, 2023. We hope you have a fantastic holiday season, whether or not you are celebrating, and we’ll see you for a look back at 2022 in the first week of January 🙂
__
Peter Cooper and the Cooperpress team

JavaScript Weekly

Announcing SvelteKit 1.0 — Svelte is a virtual DOM-free, compiled ahead of time, frontend UI framework with many fans. SvelteKit introduces a framework and tooling around Svelte to build complete webapps. This release post explains some of its approach and how it differs to other systems.

The Svelte Team

Dr. Axel Tackles Two Proposals: Iterator Helpers and Set Methods — Here’s something to get your teeth into! Dr. Axel takes on two promising ECMAScript proposals and breaks down what they’re about and why they’ll (hopefully) become useful to JavaScript developers. The first tackles iterator helpers (new utility methods for working with iterable data) and the second tackles Set methods which will extend ES6’s Set object.

Dr. Axel Rauschmayer

🧈 Retire your Legacy CMS with ButterCMS — ButterCMS is your new content backend. We’re SaaS so we host, maintain, and scale the CMS. Enable your marketing team to update website + app content without needing you. Try the #1 rated SaaS Headless CMS for your JS app today. Free for 30 days.

🧈 ButterCMS sponsor

🏆  The Best of Node Weekly in 2022 — In this week’s issue of Node Weekly (our Node.js-focused sister newsletter) we looked back at the most popular items of the year, including the Tao of Node, an array of JavaScript testing best practices, and the most popular Node.js frameworks in 2022.

Node Weekly Newsletter

jQuery 3.6.2 Released — Humor me. You might not be using jQuery anymore, but it’s (still) the most widely deployed JavaScript library and it’s fantastic to see it being maintained.

jQuery Foundation

IN BRIEF:

Node 19.3.0 (Current) has been released to bring npm up to v9.2. Breaking changes in v9.x warrant this update and the release post explains the current policy around npm’s ongoing inclusion in Node.

ƛ The Glasgow Haskell Compiler (GHC) has gained a new JavaScript backend meaning the reference Haskell compiler can now emit JavaScript and be used more easily to build front-end apps.

GitHub is rolling out secrets scanning to all public repos for free.

The New Stack reflects on 2022 as a ‘golden year’ for JavaScript and some of the developments we’ve seen. We’ll be doing our own such roundup in the next issue.

RELEASES:

Node.js 16.19.0 (LTS) and 14.21.2 (LTS)

Chart.js 4
↳ Canvas-based chart library. (Samples.)

PouchDB 8.0
↳ CouchDB-inspired syncing database.

SWR 2.0 – React data-fetching library.

📒 Articles & Tutorials

Why Cypress v12 is a Big Deal — A practical example-led love letter of sorts to how the latest version of the popular Cypress ‘test anything that runs in a browser’ library makes testing frontend apps smoother than before.

Gleb Bahmutov

Five Challenges to Building an Isomorphic JS Library — When it comes to JavaScript, “isomorphic” means code or libraries that run both on client and server runtimes with minimal adaptations.

Nick Fahrenkrog (Doordash)

▶  A Podcast for Candid Chats on Product, Business & Leadership — Join Postlight leaders & guests as they discuss topics like running great meetings & creating solid product launches.

The Postlight Podcast sponsor

Next, Nest, Nuxt… Nust? — “This blog post is for everyone looking for their new favorite JavaScript backend framework.” If the names of frameworks are all starting to blur together in your head, this is for you. Marius explains just what systems like Next and Gatsby do and touches on a few differences.

Marius Obert (Twilio)

Calculating the Maximum Diagonal Distance in a Given Collection of GeoJSON Features using Turf.js — This is cool. Turf.js is a geospatial analysis library, by the way.

Piotr Jaworski

Optimize Interaction to Next Paint — How to optimize for the experimental Interaction to Next Paint (INP) metric — a way to assess a page’s overall responsiveness to user interactions.

Jeremy Wagner & Philip Walton (Google)

Need to Upgrade to React 18.2? Don’t Have Time? Our Experts Can Help — Stuck in dependency hell? We’ve been there. Hire our team of experts to upgrade deps, gradually paying off tech debt.

UpgradeJS.com – JavaScript Upgrade Services by OmbuLabs sponsor

How We Configured pnpm and Turborepo for Our Monorepo

Pierre-Louis Mercereau (NHost)

Rendering Emails with Svelte

Gautier Ben Aim

🛠 Code & Tools

Wretch 2.3: A Wrapper Around fetch with an Intuitive Syntax — A long standing, mature library that makes fetch a little more extensible with a fluent API. Check the examples.

Julien Elbaz

SWR 2.0: Improved React Hooks for Data Fetching — The second major release of SWR (Stale-While-Revalidate) includes new mutation APIs, new developer tools, as well as improved support for concurrent rendering.

Ding, Liu, Kobayashi, and Xu

Don’t Let Your Issue Tracker Be a Four-Letter Word. Use Shortcut

Shortcut (formerly Clubhouse.io) sponsor

vanilla-tilt.js 1.8: A Smooth 3D Tilting Effect Library — No dependencies and simple to use and customize. GitHub repo.

Șandor Sergiu

visx: Airbnb’s Low Level Visualization React Components — Bring your own state management, animation library, or CSS-in-JS.. visx can slot into any React setup. Demos.

Airbnb

Scene.js 1.7: A CSS Timeline-Based Animation Library — Plenty of examples on the site. Has components for React, Vue and Svelte.

Daybrush

PortalVue 3.0
↳ Feature-rich portal plugin for Vue 3.

Kea 3.1
↳ Composable state management for React.

jest-puppeteer 6.2
↳ Run tests using Jest + Puppeteer.

NodeBB 2.7 – Node.js based forum software.

Pino 8.8 – Fast JSON-oriented logger.

💻 Jobs

Software Engineer — Join our “kick ass” team. Our software team operates from 17 countries and we’re always looking for more exceptional engineers.

Stickermule

Developer Relations Manager — Join the CKEditor team to build community around an Open Source project used by millions of users around the world 🚀

CKEditor

Find JavaScript Jobs with Hired — Create a profile on Hired to connect with hiring managers at growing startups and Fortune 500 companies. It’s free for job-seekers.

Hired

🎁 And one for fun

Snow.js: Add a Snow Effect to a Web Page — Well, it’s that time of the year (in some parts of the world!) If you’re more interested in how the effect is made, it’s inspired by this CodePen example built around some fancy CSS.

Or if you’re a bit more childish, you could always put Fart.js on your site.. 🙈

Merry Christmas to you all and we’ll see you again in 2023!

N|Solid v4.8.4 is now available

Posted on by Simon Helberg

IMPORTANT: This release of N|Solid v4.8.4 contains a Node.js security release!

NodeSource is excited to announce N|Solid v4.8.4 which contains the following changes:

Node.js v14.21.1 (LTS): Includes a Node.js security release captured in Node.js v14.21.1 (LTS).
Node.js v16.18.1 (LTS): Includes a Node.js security release captured in – Node.js v16.18.1 (LTS).
Node.js v18.12.1 (LTS): Includes a Node.js security release captured in Node.js v18.12.1 (LTS).

For detailed information on installing and using N|Solid, please refer to the N|Solid User Guide..

Changes

NodeSource is excited to announce N|Solid v4.8.4 which contains the following changes:

This release includes patches for these vulnerabilities:

CVE-2022-3602: X.509 Email Address 4-byte Buffer Overflow (High)
CVE-2022-3786: X.509 Email Address Variable Length Buffer Overflow (High)
CVE-2022-43548: DNS rebinding in –inspect via invalid octal IP address (Medium)

There are three available LTS Node.js versions for you to use with N|Solid, Node.js 16 Gallium, Node.js 14 Fermium and Node.js 18 Hydrogen.

N|Solid v4.8.4 Fermium ships with Node.js v14.21.1.

N|Solid v4.8.4 Gallium ships with Node.js v16.18.1.

N|Solid v4.8.4 Hydrogen ships with Node.js v18.12.1.

The Node.js 14 Fermium LTS release line will continue to be supported until April 30, 2023.

The Node.js 16 Gallium LTS release line will continue to be supported until September 11, 2023.

The Node.js 18 Hydrogen LTS release line will continue to be supported until April 30, 2025.

Supported Operating Systems for N|Solid Runtime and N|Solid Console

Please note that The N|Solid Runtime is supported on the following operating systems:

Windows:

Windows 10
Microsoft Windows Server 1909 Core
Microsoft Windows Server 2012
Microsoft Windows Server 2008

macOS:
macOS 10.11 and newer

RPM based 64-bit Linux distributions (x86_64):

Amazon Linux AMI release 2015.09 and newer
RHEL7 / CentOS 7 and newer
Fedora 32 and newer

DEB based 64-bit Linux distributions (x86_64, arm64 and armhf):

Ubuntu 16.04 and newer
Debian 9 (stretch) and newer

Alpine
Alpine 3.3 and newer

Download the latest version of N|Solid

You can download the latest version of N|Solid via http://accounts.nodesource.com or visit https://downloads.nodesource.com/directly.

New to N|Solid?

If you’ve never tried N|Solid, this is a great time to do so. N|Solid is a fully compatible Node.js runtime that has been enhanced to address the needs of the Enterprise. N|Solid provides meaningful insights into the runtime process and the underlying systems. Click here to start!

As always, we’re happy to hear your thoughts – feel free to get in touch with our team or reach out to us on Twitter at @nodesource.

N|Solid v4.9.0 is now available

Posted on by Simon Helberg

NodeSource is excited to announce N|Solid v4.9.0 which contains the following changes:

This version of N|Solid contains amazing features like M__achine Learning support__ and SBOM support (Software Bill of Materials) , it also contains the latest Node.js versions: v14.21.1 (LTS), v16.18.1 (LTS) and v18.12.1 (LTS), few updates and stability improvements.

For detailed information on installing and using N|Solid, please refer to the N|Solid User Guide..

Changes

NodeSource is excited to announce N|Solid v4.9.0 which contains the following changes:

Machine Learning support: this feature contains common Node.js issues detection powered by machine learning analysis, also allows the users to train custom models to be used to detect similar patterns in your applications metrics, the machine learning detection is also integrated with the global notification system and the events logs.

SBOM support (Software Bill of Materials): N|Solid has added support for SBOM reporting in all applications connected to the N|Solid console, the report is offered in two formats: JSON and PDF, it contains the information for the dependency inventory of an specific application; it includes valuable information lik licensing and the security status for each dependency used.

There are three available LTS Node.js versions for you to use with N|Solid, Node.js 16 Gallium, Node.js 14 Fermium and Node.js 18 Hydrogen.

N|Solid

N|Solid v4.9.0 Fermium ships with Node.js v14.21.1.

N|Solid v4.9.0 Gallium ships with Node.js v16.18.1.

N|Solid v4.9.0 Hydrogen ships with Node.js v18.12.1.

Node.js

The Node.js 14 Fermium LTS release line will continue to be supported until April 30, 2023.
The Node.js 16 Gallium LTS release line will continue to be supported until September 11, 2023.
The Node.js 18 Hydrogen LTS release line will continue to be supported until April 30, 2025.

Supported Operating Systems for N|Solid Runtime and N|Solid Console

Please note that The N|Solid Runtime is supported on the following operating systems:

Windows:

Windows 10
Microsoft Windows Server 1909 Core
Microsoft Windows Server 2012
Microsoft Windows Server 2008

macOS:
macOS 10.11 and newer

RPM based 64-bit Linux distributions (x86_64):

Amazon Linux AMI release 2015.09 and newer
RHEL7 / CentOS 7 and newer
Fedora 32 and newer

DEB based 64-bit Linux distributions (x86_64, arm64 and armhf):

Ubuntu 16.04 and newer
Debian 9 (stretch) and newer

Alpine
Alpine 3.3 and newer

Download the latest version of N|Solid

You can download the latest version of N|Solid via http://accounts.nodesource.com or visit https://downloads.nodesource.com/directly.

New to N|Solid?

If you’ve never tried N|Solid, this is a great time to do so. N|Solid is a fully compatible Node.js runtime that has been enhanced to address the needs of the Enterprise. N|Solid provides meaningful insights into the runtime process and the underlying systems. Click [here]

Enhance Observability with Opentelemetry tracing – Part 1

Posted on by Simon Helberg

Recently, conversations have been increasing around OpenTelemetry; it is gaining more and more momentum in Node.js development circles, but what is it? How can we take advantage of the key concepts and implement them in our projects?

Of note, NodeSource is a supporter of OpenTelemetry, and we have recently implemented full support of the open-source standard in our product N|Solid. It allows us to make our powerful Node.js insights accessible via the protocol.

Opentelemetry is a relatively recent vendor-agnostic emerging standard that began in 2019 when OpenCensus and OpenTracing combined to form OpenTelemetry – seeking to provide a single, well-supported integration surface for end-to-end distributed tracing telemetry. In 2021, they released V1. 0.0, offering stability guarantees for the approach.

And most important, OpenTelemetry is an open-source observability project/framework with a collection of software development kits (SDKs), APIs, and tools for instrumentation from the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF).

W3C Trace Context is the standard format for OpenTelemetry. Cloud providers are expected to adopt this standard, providing a vendor-neutral way to propagate trace IDs through their services. Organizations use OpenTelemetry to send collected telemetry data to a third-party system for analysis.

But to break down its history a bit, we think it’s important to understand the concept of __Observability__.

At Nodesource, as you likely know, we work daily in Observability, focusing exclusively on the Node.js runtime and N|Solid from N|Solid 4.8.0 supports some OpenTelemetry features. But before getting deeper in OTEL, it is important to understand Observability and try to resolve this important question: What is Observability?

Setting the foundations to talk about OpenTelemetry

It’s important to understand that when we talk about Observability, we need first to know what questions we seek to answer or clarify when detailing a system.

The first question often asked is __why__ my application has specific behavior. And to solve this and other questions, we first must instrument our system so that our application can emit signals, that is, traces, metrics, and logs. When we correctly do this, we have the necessary information needed.

Observability is the ability to measure the internal states of a system by examining its outputs. – Splunk

Detailing a system through Data Collection: Telemetry Data

Your systems and apps need proper tooling to collect the appropriate telemetry data to achieve Observability.
But what is the telemetry data that we need?

The three key concepts are :

Metrics

Logs

Traces

Ok, let’s define each of these concepts:

Metrics

__Metrics__: are aggregations over a period of time of numeric data about your infrastructure or application. Examples include system error rate, CPU utilization, and request rate for a given service.

As quoted by isitobservable.io, OpenTelemetry has three metric instruments :

__Counter__: a value that is summed over time (similar to the Prometheus counter)
__Measure__: a value that is aggregated over time (a value over some defined range)
__Observer__: captures a current set of values ​​at a given time (like a gauge in Prometheus)

The context is still very important, along with metric information like name, description, unit, kind (counter, observer, measure), label, aggregation, and time.

Logs

__Logs__: A Log is a timestamped message emitted by services or other components. They are not necessarily associated with any particular user request or transaction, but they become more valuable when they are.

The logical line would tell us that here we must jump to traces because it is part of the three key concepts. But before defining what a trace is, we must zoom in on the concept of __Span__.

Span

__Span__: A Span represents a unit of work or operation. It tracks specific operations that a request makes, painting a picture of what happened during the time in which that operation was executed.

A span is the building block of a trace and is a named, timed operation representing a piece of the workflow in the distributed system. All traces are composed of Spans.

Traces

Traces__: A Trace records the paths taken by requests (made by an application or end-user) as they __propagate through multi-service architectures, like microservice and serverless applications. It is also known as Distributed Trace. A trace is almost always an assessment of end-to-end performance.

Without tracing, it is challenging to pinpoint the cause of performance problems in a distributed system.

Suppose you realize we broke into the three pillars of Observability when introducing the concept of Span. In that case, however, the three pillars and Span conform to what is known as __Telemetry Data__, which are simple __signals emitted from applications and resources about their internal state.__

The core concept of Context Propagation

When we want to correlate events across our services’ boundaries, we look for a context that helps us identify the current trace and Span. But context is not the only thing we need; we also need __propagation__.

If you are with us following the article carefully, you will realize that in the definition of trace, we talk about the word __‘propagation’__. You might wonder what this means.

Propagation is how context is bundled and transferred in and across services, often via HTTP headers. Now, With these clear concepts, we can begin to understand the concept of __Context Propagation__.

A critical functionality required to implement Distributed Tracing is the concept of Context Propagation. We can define it as a mechanism for storing state and accessing data across the lifespan of a distributed transaction, either across execution contexts inside a process or across the boundaries of the services that conform to our system.

For In Process propagation__, we typically use something like the __AsyncLocalStorage class from the async_hooks module.

Whereas Across Processes__, it will depend on the IPC protocol used. For example, for HTTP, there’s the Trace Context specification from the _W3C__, which defines the _traceparent and tracestate headers to propagate tracing info.

Getting into a Distributed Application

Let’s say we have a distributed application like the one in the picture. It has 4 Nodejs services: API, auth, Service1 and Service2, and 1 database.

Imagine we’re having intermittent performance issues. They could come from several points:
– Database access
– Network link status,
– DNS request latency, etc.
Finding where exactly may become a very hard and time-consuming task; the harder, the more complex the system is.

Distributed tracing will help us A LOT with that, as we’ll generate tracing information on every point of the distributed system (A, B, C, D, and E). Not only that, but while the request goes through all the services, thanks to Context Propagation, some ‘tracing state’ will be passed along so all the tracing info can be linked to the very same request.

Instrument your system

To get visibility into the performance and behaviors of the different microservices, we need to instrument the code with OpenTelemetry to generate traces. But first, let’s define what Instrumentation is…

Automatic Instrumentation

With __Automatic Instrumentation__, our instrumentation libraries will automatically take the configuration provided (through code or environment variables) and do most of the work.

In the following example, using the OpenTelemetry SDK, we show how we can automatically generate spans for every HTTP transaction handled by the Nodejs HTTP core module.

Manual Instrumentation

__Manual instrumentation__, on the other hand, while requiring more work on the user/developer side, enables far more options for customization, from naming various components within OpenTelemetry (for example, spans and the traces ) to add your own attributes, specific exception handling, and more. See the following example shows how to manually generate a Span using the OpenTelemetry SDK.

How to Implement Opentelemetry in my project?

The way we historically would implement a typical observability pipeline is shown in the following picture.

In this case, having all that data at your disposal is great and can give us a valuable overview of our system, but unless we are able to correlate the observability signals somehow: metrics, logs, and traces, we won’t be able to have the best of it.
OpenTelemetry comes to solve this problem. The solution is going to come from correlating these signals. This can be done by applying the same concept of Context Propagation that was used for Traces to Metrics and Logs, so in this case, identifiers such as the trace_id and the span_id are associated with those signals.

OpenTelemetry spanId and traceId can correlate Logs and Metrics with a specific Span in a Trace.

Opentelemetry Components

OpenTelemetry is much more… Before finishing this article, it is important to describe the different components of OpenTelemetry.

Note: For more detail, read the specification overview of the Opentelemetry project.

OpenTelemetry API: It provides an API, which defines data types and operations for generating and correlating tracing, metrics, and logging data.

💚 From N|Solid 4.8.0 we provide an implementation of the OpenTelemetry TraceAPI, allowing users to instrument their own code using the de-facto standard API.

OpenTelemetry SDK: It provides Language-specific implementations of the API.

OpenTelemetry OTLP: A protocol to transport the Telemetry Data.

💚 With N|Solid 4.8.0 we support many instrumentation modules available in the OpenTelemetry ecosystem. Supporting exporting traces using the OpenTelemetry Protocol(OTLP) over HTTP.

OpenTelemetry Collector: To receive, process, and export Telemetry data.

💚 In N|Solid 4.8.0 is now possible to send N|Solid Runtime monitoring information (metrics and traces) to backends supporting the OpenTelemetry standard like multiple APMS (Dynatrace, Datadog, Newrelic).

OpenTelemetry Semantic Conventions: To have well-defined naming for the attributes associated with the signals: (service.name, http. port, etc.)

We know that there may be other key concepts to develop around Opentelemetry, and for this reason, we invite you to visit the direct website of the project or the Github Repo directly.

This introductory article gives us the basis for sharing a demo we prepared for NodeConf.EU, where we apply open-source tools to implement Opentelemetry in your project. We invite you to stay tuned for our next blog post. 😉 Wait for the second part!

Conclusions

Traces are really useful for understanding modern distributed systems.
We build better software when we get the best of our traces.
With OTel (Opentelemetry), we’re able to have maximized insights and answer future questions without having to make any code changes.
#OTel provides interoperability with observability tools.
Collect and correlate telemetry data is easy if you follow the OpenTelemetry framework.
As far as we know, the OpenTelemetry community is working hard to develop support for metrics and logs. Waiting for news soon! 🤞
Note: If you want to learn more about OpenTelemetry in Javascript, click HERE

To start getting more value out of your traces and metrics, you can use Opentelemetry with N|Solid back-end.

Achieve Your Performance Goals With N|Solid

We know that you want to get the best out of your application and to do it professionally, you will surely need a great ally to help you with various tools without affecting your performance. We do not want to stay in a ‘marketing speech’ where we tell you that we are the best… you can 👀check it directly here with this Open Source tool that also includes OTEL Results.

We’d love to hear more from you! 💚
– Feel free to TRY N|Solid and get in touch with us on Twitter at @nodesource.

Top 10 N|Solid —APM for Node— features you needed to use

Posted on by Simon Helberg

Nearly a year ago, we launched N|Solid SaaS, and although there are still a few months to go before our anniversary, we wanted to share the top 10 features ofN|Solid that make us proud every day of what we have built.

N|Solid is the best way to monitor and secure your Node.js applications (including in production) that are trusted by developers, software teams, and global enterprise companies. It has an array of features like other APMs, but we go deeper with our insights and are more performant than all others. We created N|Solid to help companies build the best software with Node and save time resolving issues. Because there is significant risk in deploying open-source applications without knowing the security gaps, we provide features to prevent security issues and insights for resolving them.

We are confident we’re the best APM solution for Node. js-based applications; if you are using Node, you should be using our runtime. We’re a complete product/solution, not just an APM focused on Node.

About N|Solid

N|Solid is a toolset built on Node.js that provides a number of enhancements to improve troubleshooting, debugging, managing, monitoring, and securing your Node.js applications. It is 100% compatible with the open-source project and requires no instrumentation of your code.

N|Solid Console

N|Solid provides a web-based console, ‘N|Solid Console’ to monitor your applications but also allows you to introspect your Node.js applications, in the same way, directly in the CLI if you run the __N|Solid Runtime__.

N|Solid Runtime

If you want to introspect your Node.js applications and have the most control from your command line, you’ll run them with the N|Solid Runtime, which is shaped similarly to a typical Node.js runtime but provides some additional executables.

To install N|Solid Runtime, download and unpack an N|Solid Runtime from the N|Solid download site.

Why N|Solid is an APM

Traditionally, the acronym APM has been used to refer to application performance management. However, in recent years it also refers, perhaps more correctly, to Application Performance Monitoring, and that is exactly what N|Solid does, which is why its categorization in this spectrum of applications is correct. Something important to highlight is that it is not a polyglot APM; it is clearly an APM specialized in Node.js, which has always been our focus.

While other APMs support Node.js, none provide the level of insights N|Solid can. In many cases, the APMs can become a part of the problem by consuming significant resources due to how they are designed. But don’t take our word for it. You can check it with real data through this OS Project — The APM’s Benchmark tool —.

APM’s Benchmark Tool – Overview Screen

N|Solid APM (Self-hosted or SaaS) is the best observability and insights tool to manage Node performance and security, and the full platform access enables you to really #KnowyourNode

In this blog post, we want to wrap it up our product series, briefly telling you about the 10 main features of N|Solid. We hope you like it and it helps you get the most out of our product.

[1] Project & Applications Monitoring in N|Solid

Visually view application behavior and identify performance and security issues.

With Project & Application Monitoring, you can track a website or any application based on Node.js. This feature allows you to collect your log data to help developers detect bugs and process use, track downtime, and improve performance to be consistent and focused on the end-user experience.

N|Solid APM – Projects & Applications View

This area is mainly made up of 3 main views that use the Projects and Applications and Process Monitoring:
– Applications view
– Application summary view
– Processes view

Read more about this feature here: https://nsrc.io/ProjectApplicationsMonitoringNS

[2] Process Monitoring in N|Solid

Access deep performance insights.

The applications and associated processes are displayed in this feature of our N|Solid Console. You can visualize Event Loop Estimated Lag, Heap Used, or CPU Used, for example, and you can correlate these metrics in a planimetry. You can also select a specific process to know its general status and vulnerabilities and choose a specific graphic to visually represent the selected information.

N|Solid APM – Process Monitoring

Read more here: https://nsrc.io/ProcessMonitoringNS

[3] CPU Profiling in N|Solid

Shows what functions consume CPU% and how resources are allocated.

CPU Profiling allows you to understand where opportunities exist to improve your Node processes’ speed and load capacity. This feature shows what functions consume CPU% and how resources are allocated.

N|Solid APM – Flamegraph-CPU Profile

Read more here: https://nsrc.io/CPUProfilingNS

[4] Worker Threads in N|Solid

View In-depth metrics of each worker thread.

Worker threads are treated first class and have the same access to CPU profiles, snapshots, etc. as the main process. We are the only solution that has full support worker threads.

View In-depth metrics of each worker thread. With this feature, identify opportunities to improve the performance of CPU-intensive work.

Read more here: https://nsrc.io/WorkerThreadsNS

[5] Capture Heap Snapshots in N|Solid

Understand where and how memory is being used

Taking heap snapshots is a great way to help identify the underlying problem when faced with a memory leak or performance issue. In this way, you will be able to understand where and how memory is being used, and you will be able to quickly resolve memory leaks and performance issues.

N|Solid APM – Capture Heap Snapshots

Read more here: https://nsrc.io/HeapSnapshotsNS

[6] Memory Anomaly Detection in N|Solid

View In-depth metrics of each worker thread.

Identify Memory anomalies taken with a more accurate detection method.
– Insights and metrics are historical, before and after the incident happened.
– Get anomalies at different heap usage levels.
– Detect correlation between sets of memory-specific metrics.
– Filter results by specific processes inside your application.

N|Solid APM – Memory Anomaly Detection

Read more here: https://nsrc.io/MemoryAnomalyNS

[7] Vulnerability Scanning – NCM – in N|Solid

Know all of the potential vulnerabilities within your application.

NCM is security, compliance, and curation tool around the 3rd-Party Node.js & JavaScript package ecosystem. It provides protection against security vulnerabilities and licensing compliance issues and provides risk assessment when working with a 3rd-party ecosystem.

The N|Solid Console can be configured to perform periodic verification of all packages loaded by all N|Solid processes.

N|Solid APM – Vulnerability Scanning from N|Solid Runtime

NCM provides

Actionable insights.
Offline vulnerability scanning.
Prevent processes in an application from launching if they have vulnerabilities with “strict mode.”
NCM-CI (Service Tokens and CI Processes) customization.

__Note__: NCM can be viewed from 3 locations: full overview, per application, and per process.

Read more here: https://nsrc.io/VulnerabilityScanningNS

[8] HTTP Tracing support in N|Solid

Enables the ability to debug application latency and other issues.

HTTP tracing gathers throughput and the lifecycle of any HTTP, DNS, or other types of request.
– Debug latency issues, monitor your services, and more with the collected information.
– See in a timeline graph the density of the number of tracked spans.
– Inspect each span for more detail on the collected trace.
– Filter the results by the attributes of a span and delimit them to the time range.

N|Solid APM – HTTP Tracing Support

Read more here: https://nsrc.io/HTTPTracingNS

[9] Global Alerts & Integrations in N|Solid

Be aware of issues and vulnerabilities. Pre-configured API integrations with key 3rd party services.

You can use automation to trigger alerts over integrations, CPU profiles, or heap snapshots. Be aware of issues and vulnerabilities, Pre-configured API integrations with key 3rd party services.

So when creating the heap snapshot, for example, I will have the notification directly in Slack of my N|Solid Console’s behavior; from there, I can check it by opening the Console.

N|Solid APM – Global Alerts & Integrations – Slack Example

Read more here: https://nsrc.io/GlobalAlertsIntegrationsNS

[10] Distributed Tracing in N|Solid

Better understand the factors that affect an application’s latency.

Distributed tracing is a core component of Observability mainly used by site reliability engineers (SREs) but also by developers and is recommended in that way to obtain the greatest benefits as a team in charge of modern distributed software.

As your system scales, you’ll need to add a tracing and refine sampling capabilities, which means getting the context to understand the complexity of distributed architectures.

N|Solid APM – Distributed Tracing

Distributed Tracing provides several solutions, which include:

Monitoring system health
Latency trend and outliers
Control flow graph
Asynchronous process visualization
Debugging microservices

Read more here: https://nsrc.io/DistributedTracingNS

Still, on our roadmap, we are planning and executing features that will shake up the ecosystem in the coming months. Stay tuned! 😎

Top Ten Features In N|Solid

🧭Projects & Applications Monitoring in N|Solid – https://nsrc.io/ProjectApplicationsMonitoringNS

🌌 Process Monitoring in N|Solid – https://nsrc.io/ProcessMonitoringNS

🔍 CPU Profiling in N|Solid – https://nsrc.io/CPUProfilingNS

🕵️‍♂️ Worker Threads Monitoring in N|Solid – https://nsrc.io/WorkerThreadsNS

📸 Capture Heap Snapshots in N|Solid – https://nsrc.io/HeapSnapshotsNS

🚨 Memory Anomaly Detection in N|Solid – https://nsrc.io/MemoryAnomalyNS

🚩 Vulnerability Scanning & 3rd party Modules Certification in N|Solid – https://nsrc.io/VulnerabilityScanningNS

👣 HTTP Tracing Support in N|Solid – https://nsrc.io/HTTPTracingNS

⏰ Global Alerts & Integrations in N|Solid – https://nsrc.io/GlobalAlertsIntegrationsNS

🪄 Distributed Tracing in N|Solid – https://nsrc.io/DistributedTracingNS
…and more

Want to try N|Solid?

To check out the top 10 features and more in N|Solid, create your account in sign up or sign in, in the top right corner of our main page. More information is available here.

As always, we’re happy to hear your thoughts – feel free to get in touch with our team or reach out to us on Twitter at @nodesource.