Is Node.js a good alternative to build complete websites?

Question

I'm wondering if using Node.js (express.js) is the best option to go for a complete website. I've been using Rails + Node.js and am wondering if this is still the best option or if I should move completely to Node.js.

Are there websites built completely with node.js? I imagine it must lack many things Rails offers.

Answer 1

I imagine it must lack many things Rails offers.

I gave a short list below but I would like to know what you could be missing and I think(almost certain) we can give you some alternatives on node.js.

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Modules

node.js is getting pretty complete and I think you can run your entire site using only node.js using for example the following modules. I assume you know about npm. If not I really advice you to google for it and learn that. To search npm you can use http://search.npmjs.org:

web framework:

1. High performance, high class web development for Node.js
   https://github.com/visionmedia/express

2. Socket.IO aims to make realtime apps possible in every browser and mobile device, blurring the differences between the different transport mechanisms. https://github.com/learnboost/socket.io-node

I believe with these two web-frameworks you can create a lot of sites. For example express is a very powerfull web framework and supports a lot of cool things like:

• session support.
• a lot powerful template engines. I like Jade for example. You could also share these between client and server a lot of the times easily.
• excellent routing.

just to name a few.

database:

1. Redis is an open source, advanced key-value store. It is often referred to as a data structure server since keys can contain strings, hashes, lists, sets and sorted sets.
   https://github.com/mranney/node_redis

2. MongoDB (from "humongous") is a scalable, high-performance, open source, document-oriented database. Mongoose is a MongoDB object modeling tool designed to work in an asychronous environment.
   https://github.com/learnboost/mongoose/

With those two databases I think you should be able to accomplish most of your tasks. The nice thing is that Redis is extremely fast/simple advanced KV-store(dataset in memory/also supports VM) and supports replication while Mongodb is more completely(slower then redis) and also supports sharding.

authentication:

1. Authentication and authorization (password, facebook, & more) for your node.js Connect and Express apps.
   https://github.com/bnoguchi/everyauth

Like I said previously you can get a long way with only these modules.

Answer 2

Express.js is more akin to Sinatra. They're simpler frameworks than rails.

Express's list of sites is fairly small http://expressjs.com/applications.html

So I think it's also good to look at Sinatra's list http://www.sinatrarb.com/wild.html

So to answer your questions in reverse order. Yes it lacks all the features of rails. Yes there are sites written completely in Express. And going to 100% Node.js might be the right decision for your site.

It depends on which features you'd miss and what performance you need.