Node.js spawns multiple processes

Question

I got a little bit confused about my node.js application. As far as I thought, node.js runs in a single process. However if I start my application by invoking node app.jsand monitor it with htop, I can see 4 sub-processes running, where I'd expect only one to be.

app.js

var express = require('express'),
    routes = require('./routes'),

    objects = require('./objects'),

    http = require('http'),
    path = require('path'),

    pinLayout = objects.pinlayout,

    // utils
    util = require('util'),
    wiringPi = require('wiring-pi'),
    winston = require('winston'),
    async = require('async');


// Logger - winston
var log = new(winston.Logger)({
    transports: [
        new(winston.transports.Console)({
            colorize: true,
            timestamp: true
        }),
        new(winston.transports.File)({
            filename: './log/app.log'
        })
    ]
});

// WiringPi
wiringPi.setup('gpio');

var app = express();

// all environments
app.set('port', process.env.PORT || 3001);
app.set('views', __dirname + '/views');
app.set('view engine', 'jade');

app.use(express.favicon());
app.use(express.logger('dev'));
app.use(express.bodyParser());
app.use(express.methodOverride());

app.use(require('less-middleware')({
    src: __dirname + '/public',
    force: true,
    compress: true
}));

app.use(app.router);
app.use(express.static(path.join(__dirname, 'public')));

// 404 Page
app.use(function(req, res, next) {
    res.render('404.jade', {
        title: "404 - Page Not Found",
        showFullNav: false,
        status: 404,
        url: req.url
    });
});

// development only
if ('development' == app.get('env')) {
    app.use(express.errorHandler({
        dumpExceptions: true,
        showStack: true
    }));
}

Answer 1

Although your code runs in a single thread, node.js uses a thread pool (mostly) for file system operations. This is needed because there are no async APIs for fs.

For example, when you call file.readFile, you will go through Read(), which will call:

ASYNC_CALL(read, cb, fd, buf, len, pos);

read is the blocking unix read(2). This will run in a thread until it completes. These are the threads you are seeing.