New developers that are just beginning to learn the craft would know all about how difficult it can be to meander through the endless ocean of questions facing them right at the start of their journey. During their early correspondence with clients and internal team members, new developers have a number of questions coming up in their minds, especially when businesses hire ReactJS developers who need to quickly adapt and understand the project requirements.

To begin with, they need to know the right JavaScript library to fit the requirements of their project between React or Node. Plus, Node.js is known to be scalable, but can it be used alongside React? Which out of ReactJS and Node.js is better if we want a scalable UI for the web application?

The answers to these questions require a detailed account of both React and Node.js and how they help developers become more efficient in their work. If you are a newbie developer, you would want to know the answer to these questions, and we have them for you here.

In this article, we look at some of the whys, hows and what ifs of using React with Node.js for web development. The article includes a detailed understanding of both technologies and studies how they complement each other in a modern JavaScript stack.

Is React a Frontend or Backend Library?

React is created and maintained by the team at Meta (formerly Facebook) and works as a front-end library that runs on a browser. ReactJS development is like most libraries and runs with backends like Rails or PHP and web servers like Nginx or Apache.

The React platform was initially made for working with web browsers. The library now comes equipped with a ReactDOM add-on that allows it to work with the browser’s DOM. Over the years, the React ecosystem has expanded well beyond the browser — React Native brings the same component model to native iOS and Android apps, and frameworks like Next.js and Remix now sit on top of React to handle routing, server-side rendering, and server components out of the box.

React allows you to build interactive websites that cater to the requirements of users and minimizes challenges such as low performance due to DOM manipulations and slow user interactions. The framework changes this by using a Virtual DOM, where all changes are saved and algorithms are analyzed.

React is hence the preferable choice among all developers looking to build hybrid, highly robust and native applications for their brand.

Is Node.js Backend or Frontend?

Node.js remains one of the most widely used JavaScript runtimes for backend and full-stack development, powering everything from event-driven microservices to real-time APIs and internal tooling. The framework is ideal for creating modern solutions that work on event queues, web sockets, and microservices.

The framework also makes the ideal choice for backend management, due to the asynchronous management style and the even-driven nature of the application.

Node can conveniently be used as a programming language for writing back end and front end adjacent code ((build tooling, SSR, API routes)) for applications built in JavaScript or Typescript. The framework does this by utilizing the runtime environment. Many giants like Netflix, PayPal, and Walmart have Node.js working on the backend coding and API development process.

Since it is highly scalable in nature, Node has a high end developer community and is a preferable choice among developers for backend development.

Can you Use Node.js with React?

You can definitely use Node.js with ReactJS framework. In fact, Node.js is known to be the most suitable platform for hosting and running the servers and build tooling applications built on React. The two primary reasons for this are;

• Node uses a node package manager or an NPM to install all new updates and packages.
• Node bundles single applications built through React to simplify the compilation process. This is done through the use of appropriate Node modules and by using a web pack.

Using Node.js to run your web servers can help your organization in a number of ways. Some of these ways include:

• Node.js utilizes a special V8 engine to address the bulk requests sent by customers to manage both quantity and quality.
• Both React and Node.js happen to be languages based on JavaScript. Both these languages can be executed on the server-side and client side of the process.
• Newbie developers can easily execute the code for ReactJS in the Node.js environment.

Frameworks like Next.js and Remix — both of which run on Node.js — make server-side rendering and server components dramatically easier to implement than building SSR from scratch with ReactDOM alone.

Changing the entire look and feel of your backend is not always a good option. If you have Ruby on Rails or RoR as your backend, you can always move to Nodejs to run the web server side of your application.

Both React and Node.js operate within the development ecosystem today for entirely different reasons. It is hence important to analyze their relevant use case and the approach they follow for development. ReactJS is primarily used to build front case UI components, while Node.js takes care of backend data.

Reasons to Use Node.js and ReactJS Together

Some of the reasons why you should use Node.js together with ReactJS to make your code scalable and highly efficient include:

• Real-time Data: Using Node.js is highly recommended for a constant server connection if the core of your application is based on real time data management or streaming.
• High Server Load: Using Node.js with React can help in handling requests and maintaining server load balance.
• JSON APIs: You can easily build JSON APIs for your application using Node.js. The reusability of the code enables sharing within ReactJS.
• MERN Stack: You can use the MERN stack, including MongoDB, Express, React and Node.js to use both together.
• Single page applications: Single page applications are best built using ReactJS with Node js for robust backend, lightweight app and asynchronous data loading through callback functions.

Both React and Node.js happen to have different functions in the web development process, but can be used together to reap multiple benefits. The only experience a developer needs to use both these technologies is that of using NPM. Nodejs is used by several tech-giants like Netflix, PayPal,because it is a very useful technology. To know more about ReactJS and Node.js development contact us today.