6 Tips to Make your Node JS Web App Faster

In the past several years, JavaScript has proved its importance. It has become one of the most frequently used programming languages. Many developers and companies are using JavaScript more than any other programming language.

Similarly, Node.js has become famous for backend programming in a short period. Even many big companies that have heavy traffic are also using Node.js.

Node.js’s event-driven architecture is an excellent technology for real-time applications, especially for chat and streaming applications. This feature has made it popular among the node js developers. The reason for this is that both the client-side and server-side are written in JavaScript itself, and hence the synchronization process of both becomes easy.

In this article, we will tell you as much as possible about Node.js’ performance and efficiency so that you can get better results for your Node.js web apps.

• Module Bundlers and Task Runners

It is crucial that whatever is being sent to the browser be as small as possible on the front end. It is an essential thing for images, JavaScript, and CSS files. Module bundlers aand task runners are the most critical processes for this.

Module bundlers are used to process a group of modules and their dependents in a file. All this is done by node.js. After the procedure of minification is completed, it is ready for production. The process of minification depends on the tool you are using.

The Minification process completely changes the code. It shortens the code but does not spoil it. It truncates multi-character variable names, truncates a large code by writing it differently, or combines multiple JavaScript files. These methods do not reduce the quality of the code, but the file’s size becomes small. A node js developer intelligently utilizes this minification process to optimize the app and make it faster.

• CSS modules

When you want to reduce browser requests during page loading, CSS minification is the next step in this link. PostCSS, Sass, and LESS help simplify the code. They compile all the files into just one CSS file, so that the browser does not have to go round again and again to fetch the code, and it serves the file quickly.

• Images

Images are the next step that needs to be worked on to get faster speed. The lighter the images, the faster the Node.js web application will function. Images can be compressed to lighten, which is the best method to optimize an image for better speed.

• SSL/TLS and HTTP/2

Using HTTP/2 is a beneficial method when building Node.js applications. It reduces bandwidth usage and makes web browsing simpler and faster. Along with this, it improves performance and resolves problems related to HTTP/1.x.

Other features of HTTP/2 include header compression and multiplexing.

Header compression — It removes the useless headers and determines that all HTTP headers are sent in compressed format.

Multiplexing- It allows sending multiple requests to get resources and response messages in a single TCP connection.

Multiplexing is used to reduce the number of requests that are sent to the server. Otherwise, the time it takes to create an HTTP connection is longer than the time it takes to transmit data. To take advantage of HTTP/2, it is necessary to implement Transport Layer Security (TLS) and Secure Socket Layer (SSL) protocols.

• Caching

Caching is a method commonly used to improve the performance and speed of any app. HTML pages, CSS stylesheets, and JS scripts are stored temporarily at the client-side, called client-side caching. An example of client caching is when the browser frequently keeps used data locally or stored on a CDN. Its primary purpose is that when a user revisits the same site after visiting it earlier, the website should be loaded from the old store instead of downloading the entire site again. It improves the speed of the web app or website.

It can be done via cache headers, and HTTP is responsible for making it possible. There are two ways in which the cache headers are found:

Expire: It appears when the resource has to be requested again.

Cache-Control: max-age: It tells about the validity of the resource in seconds.

We must implement server-side caching along with client-side caching. It needs to be done to render data for each different user accessing the app.

• Optimizing Data Handling Methods

By optimizing any app, its performance and efficiency can be increased. Many things can be optimized in an app that you are not aware of.

CPU/IO-bound operation (database query or slow API call) can make Node.js programs slow.

API requests are used to fetch data in most nodes.js applications. Pagination is one of the methods to optimize this feature.

Filtering is another method. Showing results based on what the user has searched and not delivering other materials is called filtering. Pagination & Filtering is more commonly used in REST API design.

• Enable GZIP

GZIP compression is another way to increase website speed. Keep it turned on. When it is turned on, and the browser requests a resource, the server compresses it before sending it back. Conversely, if it is not turned on, it will take relatively longer to send the resource back to the browser.

• Load Balancing

Creating an application that can handle even a large number of incoming traffic is a big challenge for a node js developer. For this, many developers distribute traffic that balances the connections. Node.js allows you to duplicate an application so that you can balance the load. You can do this on either a single multicore server or multiple servers. With the help of the introduced cluster module, you can scale the node.js application to a multicore server.

Conclusion

In this article, we have discussed several ways to make the Node.js Web app faster. We have included the methods, processes, and procedures that a Node.js developer typically uses and are also necessary and essential.

When a developer creates a web app, he knows better how to optimize it and increase the speed. So we would suggest that you either contact a good and well-known web development company with experienced node.js developers or hire a better remote node.js developer.