Blog Category: Web App

Want to harness data from multiple external platforms to gain accuracy in decisions and operations across your business ecosystems?

Data Scraping involves employing a critical algorithm or a program to retrieve, structure, and process huge amounts of data from the web. On the flip side, at the heart of data scraping app development is Python, a programming language popular for its ease of use, extensive libraries, and faster development tools.

Whether you want to build eCommerce intelligence, generate leads, conduct market research, enhance social media strategies, or monitor brand presence, Python for data scraping solutions makes the app development journey more agile, faster, and above all easier to integrate trending technologies.

This blog is a quick ride through the ‘how’, ‘what’, and ‘why’ to use Python for developing data scraping apps. Let’s get started!

How Does Web Scraping Work?

A single Python script sends an HTTP request to a website. Which then receives a raw HTTP response that needs to be parsed using the Beautiful Soup- one of the Python libraries for data scraping. It helps turn the raw response into structured data. This structured data is then processed to use it in the script to identify the text content in the data.

Here, a combination of scrapers and crawlers is used to fetch data from websites. By browsing a website, the web crawler indexes the content. Parallely, the web scraper extracts the data you have requested. You can mention the file format in which you want the data results to be visualized along with the storage option that you want a web scraper to save the data.

Prerequisites to Build Data Scraping Apps Using Python

To develop a scalable Python web scraping app, explore the chief essentials, making it seamless to retrieve data from the web efficiently.

Selenium

It is one of the most popular open-source web development tools for automating the web browsing functions allowing users to extract data and interact with the website seamlessly.

Playwright

It is the latest cross-language and cross-platform web browser automation tool used to scrape web apps and dynamic web content. Using Playwright, it’s easy for web headless browsers like Chrome, Safari, and Microsoft Edge to navigate the web just like humans do.

Types of Data Scraping

Developers use varied web scraping techniques like HTTP programming, HTML parsing, Human copy-and-paste, DOM parsing, text pattern matching, computer vision web page analysis, or vertical aggregation based on the type and purpose to harness data from the web. Data scraping approaches vary based on the data sources and task complexities. Explore different types of data scraping that are high-in-demand among the innovators.

Web Scraping

It encompasses text, prices, images, or any other data on the web pages which are used to gather market intelligence, monitor competitors, or track product prices.

Screen Scraping

It includes data extraction from the display output of other programs when the data is not accessible directly through databases or APIs.

Social Media Scraping

Data extraction from social media platforms to leverage data related to user profiles, comments, posts, or other relevant data. It is used in market research, sentiment analysis, and understanding customer preferences.

Email Scraping

Extract email addresses from the websites to build mailing lists along with implementing legal and ethical implications.

How To Scrape Critical Data From the Web?

1. Analyze Web Structure Using Development Tools

Understanding the website structure will help determine the exact location of the data you want to extract. Based on the type of website, it has a variety of categories, listings, pricing, ratings, or other data.

Firstly, open the developer’s tools and try selecting the content element on the webpage, you will discover the tags and classes of the selected content elements. This data is critical as it helps compile all other elements with such types of details.

Now you know which class to target, you need to get the HTML from the website.

2. Get The HTML From The Website

After understanding the website structure, to get the HTML from the website, ‘Requests’- a Python library is used to send a GET request to the targeted website URL.

import requests

# Base URL
base_url = 'https://watch.toscrape.com/'

# Send GET request to the base URL
response = requests.get(base_url)

# Get the HTML content
html_content = response.text

# Print the HTML content
print(html_content)

This script will give a status code but you need to focus on the actual HTML content. Through response.text, you will get the HTML content of the website homepage that will serve as your initiation point to extract the data. This process varies based on the type of website you want to scrape data from.

Static websites don’t need any login credentials but dynamic websites do. Headless browsers like Selenium, Playwright, or Puppeteer are used in case of data extraction from dynamic websites.

Scrape Data From Dynamic Websites

For instance, to scrape data from a dynamic platform that majorly relies on JavaScript for content rendering.

First, install Playwright using pip, the Python package manager. It’s simple; just type pip install playwright in the command prompt and press ‘Enter’. Then, you need to install the necessary browser binaries by running playwright install.

Use Playwright in your script after importing it.

# Import Playwright
from playwright.sync_api import sync_playwright

# Use Playwright to open a browser, navigate to the website, and get the HTML source
with sync_playwright() as p:

    # Set up the browser. In this example, we're using Chromium.
    browser = p.chromium.launch()
    page = browser.new_page()

    # Navigate to the website
    page.goto("https://quotes.toscrape.com/js/")

    # Get the HTML source
    html_source = page.content()

    print("HTML source of the website:", html_source)

# Close the browser to free up resources
browser.close()

You have your HTML ready to process it using the Python library – playwright.

Scrape Data When the Website Structure Changes Unexpectedly

Website structure may change due to the dynamic elements that alter the CSS or HTML of the webpages, or if the website is redesigned, or updated. To ensure that the data scraping code doesn’t miss essential information-

• Choose the right selectors to navigate and extract the data you want, depending on how the website is structured and coded. The right approach is to use the selectors based on class names, unique identifiers, or semantic meaning as these attributes are most likely to remain consistent across varied website versions.
• To handle unexpected website structure changes, use logging and error handling in the web scraping code. It detects and rectifies the exceptions that occur during code execution. ‘Try-except blocks’ in Python are used for handling exceptions as well as catching that involve parsing errors, connection failures, or timeout errors. This exception handling process helps avoid crashing the code, discover and fix real causes and analyze and monitor the web scraping process.
• Fallback strategies involve using different selectors for a single data point and selecting the best one out of all. By using BeautifulSoup, Scrapy, or lxml, Python libraries for data scraping helps source varied formats of data from the same website such as XML, JSON, or RSS feeds and using cookies to bypass varied versions of the website or bypass the anti-scraping measures.
• Implement ethical data scraping principles to handle website changes. These principles respect the interests of both data providers and consumers. These principles include robots.text rules, respects the website’s privacy policies, avoids excessive web scraping and seeks data provider’s permission before scraping data from their website.

Exception Handling

Even the best laid plans go amiss which is also true with the web scraping process. Sometimes you might fetch incomplete data from the website. When the web scraping script encounters these loopholes, it throws errors that can be fixed through Python’s ‘try-except blocks’. It lets us dictate how the program must react to the errors, ensuring it doesn’t burn or crash.

Another way to handle the exceptions is to check the HTTP status codes or implement the retry mechanism to handle exceptions. Using timeouts in your network requests, log errors, and robots.text help handle the web scraping exceptions gracefully.

Proxies

A proxy server acts as an intermediary for requests received from clients needing resources from the servers that offer those resources. As web scraping involves multiple requests sent to the server from an IP address, the server might detect multiple requests and block the IP address to avoid further scraping of data. This is where proxies are used to continue the scraping as IP addresses change and create anonymity by hiding the IP address.

Bypassing Captcha and 2FA

Some websites have highly complicated authentication methods such as Captcha, CSRF tokens, or even two-factor authentication (2FA). It’s important to adopt the web scraping script to handle these complexities.

You can parse the login page firsthand to extract the CSRF token and add it to the login request. Headless browsers like Selenium, Playwright, or Puppeteer are used in case of data extraction from websites with Captcha or 2FA authentication methods.

3. Parsing HTML Content and Data Extraction

After fetching the HTML content, it’s time to structure this data how you need using ‘BeautifulSoup’, one of the best Python libraries for data scraping apps. This Python library is mainly used for pulling data out of XML and HTML files.

Firstly, convert the HTML into a BeautifulSoup object.

from bs4 import BeautifulSoup

# Parse the HTML content using BeautifulSoup
soup = BeautifulSoup(html_content, 'html.parser')

After converting the HTML, use find_all() method that helps return the list of all the data examples of the specific tag and its related attributes. To know which tags to consider, ID, Xpath, or Class are the few ways to locate the elements.

Now it’s time to fetch specific details out of the raw data sets, using find() to search within the elements. For example, to get the price, you need to look for the ‘p’ tag with class.

Next, to start filtering the data, you need to add an if statement informing Python to check for the exact data you are looking for.

# Extract watch information from the parsed HTML
for watch in soup.find_all('article', {'class': 'product_pod'}):
    if watch.find('p', {'class': 'star-rating Five'}):
        title = watch.find('h3').find('a')['title']
        price = watch.find('p', {'class': 'price_color'}).text[1:]
        watch_url = base_url + watch.find('h3').find('a')['href']
        image_url = base_url + watch.find('img')['src'][3:]

Review the whole script that navigates webpage data and filters it with the exact details you want.

Pagination in Web Scraping

Previous steps showed extracting data from the first page of the website. What if you want to scrape data from the whole website?

Here, the website URL structure gives us hints on how to initiate pagination in data scraping. By using Python’s ‘for-loop’, it reads through each page, and removes the page number from the URL along with the iteration index.

Now, merge that script into the existing script to scrape all the pages on the website.

4. Storing Scraped Data in CSV File

If you want to save this structured data for future use, you can store the data in CSV or other file formats.

Note, Python will save this data file in the existing working directory if you don’t specify another location to store the CSV file.

Firstly, import the CSV library and create a file. You are ready to start data scraping by looping all the webpages. After running the script, you will get a nice CSV of the structured data you want to fetch from the website.

Storing Scraped Data in a JSON File

If you need a JSON file, the process is similar to that of writing it to a CSV file. The only difference is that you need to add the details to a list and write that list to a JSON file.

Python makes it super easy to organize and save data scraped from the web.

It is recommended to partner with a trusted software development company critical to ensure the design and development choices are made in line with the best data scraping practices. This also involves leveraging sufficient skillsets and capabilities to develop essential data models for your unique software project.

Your Trusted Data Scraping App Development Company

Python development team at TOPS makes sure of the data quality, accurately articulates business needs, uses legit methods to scrape data without annoying the external platforms, and helps embed the core use of data scraping apps in your business processes and across the team.

Focusing on the larger to even smaller level of ‘high-value’ use cases for our client to leverage the scraped data has been our USP. Being the top Python development company for 9 years, we have exhaustively worked on the web scraping development environments and made it a forte.

In recent years, there has been an increasing demand for solutions to build single page applications (SPAs). Modern JavaScript frameworks such as Vue.JS offer a lot of advantages for building SPAs. Like every framework, Vue.JS has pros and cons.  Vue.JS can be used for building single-page applications that are not complex. If you think SEO is important for your web app, go for Nuxt. It also maximizes the performance of apps. Nuxt.JS helps to build next-generation websites and web applications for small and large businesses. 

Websites that use Nuxt.JS

• Upwork
• Louis Vuitton
• Ubisoft
• Trivago

Being built over Vue.JS, Nuxt.JS is used to build highly advanced web applications. It offers a lot of benefits to the developers and users.

1. Speedy Development 

It is easy and quick to set up a Nuxt.JS project. As it takes care of all the routines and configurations, the developers do not have to worry about coding. The app development would be faster, one can get faster time to market. 

2. Easy to build Universal Apps

As universal apps need configuration on both client-side and server side, it is considered to be a tedious task. Nuxt.JS makes it easier to build a universal app because it makes the sharing of code between server-side and client-side simpler. Creating universal apps with other tools can be difficult and time-consuming. With Nuxt.JS, developers can build a snappy user interface quickly and easily. 

Nuxt.JS provides access to several properties such as isClient and isServer on your components. There are various components like no-SSR component that can be used to prevent the component from rendering on the server-side. 

3. Enterprise-Ready 

Gone are the days when the developers had to worry about bad server-side error handling while using Nuxt.JS. There have been great improvements and developers can enjoy the benefit of Nuxt as it has a deeper understanding of SSR and enhanced Typescript support. Nuxt is the perfect choice for developing enterprise-scale applications. 

4. Easy Transitions 

A typical web application consists of JavaScript animations, CSS animations, and CSS transitions. What is the main aim of building dynamic web pages? The major idea is to make things look more pretty and move easily. Nuxt.JS possesses a transition element to make it easy to create transitions between multiple pages. 

5. Huge Library 

Nuxt.JS comes with Github that contains the most helpful modules and starter kit to build your app. Even the beginner programmers can access the library and get started. 

6. Flexibility and speed

Being light in weight, Nuxt is known for its speed as critical scripts are pre-fetched. Due to its open source feature and modular architecture, you can get greater flexibility with Nuxt development. It offers faster development than other frameworks because the features can be extended using official and third party modules. 

Why should you hire a Nuxt.JS developer?

Are you planning to build a Nuxt.JS app? You should figure out how the app would support your business model. Another aspect you should consider is SEO. As SEO is a crucial part of any business, every website owner would want a website that ranks higher in the search engines. Nuxt.JS can be used to create SEO-friendly websites that help businesses generate a lot of profits. 

There has been a great buzz about single page applications over the past few years. As they are easy to build and responsive, a lot of small and large business owners are focusing on developing SPAs. 

What should you look for in a Nuxt.JS developer?

Once you have made up your mind for building a Nuxt app, you should start looking for experienced web app development companies to help you. Along with knowledge of Nuxt.JS framework, the developers should possess the following expertise:

• Experience in working with front-end web applications 
• Knowledge of modular and reusable components in Vue.JS
• Have in-depth knowledge of JavaScript and HTML/CSS
• Familiarity with Vue.JS ecosystem

TOPS Infosolutions is known for developing highly qualitative and versatile web applications using Nuxt.JS. Whether you want to build a web app from scratch or want to hire someone to upgrade your solution to the latest version, we are there to help you. We have worked with a lot of clients and helped them deliver a great experience to their end users. We also have huge expertise in plugin development to extend the functionality of your web application. Even if you have an idea for MVP development, discuss your ideas with us and we will transform them into a reality. 

Did you know that the ease of using your shopping cart can help you increase your sales? The easier you make the shopping experience for your customer, the better your business is predicted to do. However, if you are looking for the perfect best shopping cart software, read on to know why you should choose OpenCart development services and how they can help you make your business more profitable.

What is OpenCart Development?

If you are a new e-commerce business owner and are looking for a platform that is rich in features, economical and scalable, OpenCart Development services are for you. OpenCarteCommerce CMS helps you build a website that can be used with both PHP and MySQL server sides, is available free of cost, and gives you access to remarkable features that can make your website easy to navigate and extremely customer friendly.

What are the Features that OpenCart Offers?

OpenCart’s popularity comes from its highly advantageous features such as:

1. Responsive Design
2. Hassle-Free Setup
3. Complete Control
4. Multilingual Support
5. Free of Cost
6. Support, and Maintenance

These are some of the several features that OpenCart Development offers. To know more about OpenCart Development, you can reach out to experts at Tops Infosolutions – the most trusted Opencart Development company!

What are the Advantages of Choosing OpenCart Development?

You may find several other software options. So why should you choose OpenCart Development Services over other options? OpenCart eCommerce development services offer the following advantages:

1. Free of Cost:

   It is free of cost and hence has become extremely popular for online business stores. It helps developers launch online stores effectively, that too for free!

2. Easy to Operate:

   You do not need to have formal training or a technical degree to operate OpenCart. With this technology, you can control the platform and your operations through a single admin panel. This saves you a lot of time, which you can use on focussing on more profits and sales. To get Opencart for your online business, you can hire a dedicated OpenCart developer through Tops Infosolutions.

3. Multi-Store Functionality:

   With OpenCart, you have the freedom to set up and manage different stores using a single admin panel. You can hire an OpenCart designer to explore this feature of OpenCart for your online store.

4. Responsive & SEO – Friendly:

   This platform is highly responsive and SEO friendly which means with a little hard work you can aim at higher Google ratings, credibility, and more sales!

5. Wide Range of Plugins:

   OpenCart offers a wide range of plugins, which allow you to easily scale up your business as your customer base grows!

6. Multi-Lingual and Multi-Currency Platforms:

   You have the freedom to sell across geographies in multiple languages and currencies with OpenCart Development. If you wish to expand your business further, you can hire an OpenCart developer to build your store for operating in different languages and currencies.

7. Multiple Payment and Shipping Methods:

   If security and delivery are your priority, you can rest assured with OpenCart Development. You have secure payment options and can ship your products across locations through trusted shipping methods.

Reach Out for Extension, Development, and Customization!

Tops Infosolutions is an open-source offshore web development company and an emerging leader in OpenCart development services. Tops Infosolutions offers both front-end and back-end extension development services through expertOpenCart developers. For more details, connect with us at contact@topsinfosolutions.com or +91-7575000269

CodeIgniter is an open-source framework that is mainly designed to function with the PHP framework. There are many attributes in the PHP web framework that successfully contributes to its wide acceptance. Let’s look at the top 10 reasons that explain why CodeIgniter development services are being predominantly used. 

Tops 10 Reasons for Choosing CodeIgniter Development Services

To start with, a CodeIgniter is reliable, lightweight, and a well-designed toolkit that is used for developing web solutions that are par excellence. It has so much to offer for web development services, and so there is rising demand for CodeIgniter development company in the USA. Let’s see some of the benefits of going ahead with CodeIgniter for developing web solutions.

Stress-free error handling:

Handling errors are pretty straightforward with CodeIgniter as it requires you to write only a single line code. It will help you look at all the errors in front of you, thereby helping to rectify them instantly and effortlessly perform the development process. Furthermore, the interfaces are user-friendly and help the user immensely to sort out the errors in the application without a problem.

MVC based development:

The Model View Controller MVC-based development empowers swift application development. The MVC architectural pattern divides the application into model, view, and controller, and they all are mutually dependent. CodeIgniter lets you make use of the MVC structure effortlessly for application development by writing clean codes. Moreover, the whole process is reasonable and practical, giving you a good management process with the MVC-oriented framework.

Tough security:

Several inbuilt functions will guide you in selecting the intensity level of the security that your application will require. You can transfer the data securely in decrypted format. It offers enhanced security features like remote code execution, SQL injection, XSS attacks, and many other features that offer a safe and secure web solution.

Vast community support:

PHP is one of the most widely held and sought-after scripting languages and has a vast community for support worldwide. The CodeIgniter community is a well-established forum that mainly deals with all the development problems and extends support to all the CodeIgniter developers who have trouble during the development process.

No installation required:

This framework does not have to be installed. Upload the files to the server and commence work. It saves you from PEAR packages and server modification, thus making the development process time-saving and easy.

Easy to understand:

Understanding the various aspects and features of CodeIgniter is straightforward. It is a user-friendly PHP framework that enables configuration, organization, and customization a very smooth process. Depending on your requirements for the website, may it be for your organization or for rendering eCommerce development services in the USA, you can customize easily with CodeIgniter development.

Huge selection of library:

Benchmarking classes, email, calendar, validation, zip encoding, uploading, form validation classes, shopping cart class, pagination class, and output classes are some of the features present in the inbuilt library. Also, CodeIgniter is loaded with several libraries that you could directly use. Furthermore, one can create their own library for a more advantageous development process.

Executes at a more incredible speed:

The function execution speed is one of the primary reasons that made it the most popular and sought-after PHP framework. This framework possesses the fastest execution time when compared to the rest of the PHP frameworks. The migration from one database to another is an easy process and also marks its capability to implement functions at a more incredible speed. Additionally, you only need to type fewer lines of code for execution which subsequently saves much of your time and effort.

Simple testing process:

Testing the resultant code need not have to wait until the completion of the project. You can test the functionality and performance of the project from the commencement the project. The easy testing lets you identify the errors at every single stage of the entire development process.

Easy configuration and customization:

The CodeIgniter is complemented with an easy configuration process. Thus, it becomes more advantageous for the developers to set up the framework according to their system configuration. Coding the config.php, loading the library, arrays, and database for the development process can be carried out efficiently. CodeIgniter lets easy access to create applications and edit the files as per the requirements in terms of customization.

Final thoughts

Those, as mentioned earlier, are certain prominent benefits that spread out the glory of CodeIgniter. On top of these, a simple template solution, easy documentation, a great user experience, and accessible server to server hosting are yet other merits of using this framework for CodeIgniter development services. Its user-friendly framework and quick response delivery make it a boon for web developers. It also lets them develop eccentric web solutions that are par excellence and improve the developer’s performance. 

Native app development can be complicated and tedious. Android and iOS have various languages between them, like Java, Kotlin, and Swift. You can also make use of React Native, and the chances are that you will have to alter the way of the entire development.

If you wish to launch web apps, it reaches your customers directly, but in the case of a native app, you need clearance and certification from the independent app stores available for Android and iOS.

What is a Progressive Mobile App?

Progressive web apps make use of web standard technology, JavaScript, and JSON. It has the advantages of native apps, including performance and UI tweaks. Write once you work everywhere. You build it one time, and it works almost everywhere.

A progressive web app is a case of different technologies. They are capable of increasing the performance of your app. With added features, the merits across desktop and web always keep comparing against native apps, but many of these performances are also present on the website.

If you have a website, you don’t care so much about your mobile customers, a lot of these technologies can improve your website’s performance.

Discoverability and Future of Mobile App Stores

Since progressive web apps are websites, app stores don’t need their publishers’ permission to publish on their specific platforms. They are like website directories. The App stores will have to look at PWA sites, and if specific standards are met, they’ll automatically have a place in the store.

Putting progressive web and mobile apps right in the store eliminates the difficulty of discoverability and the problem of searching the website, logging in, and then pinning it to your home screen.

Many progressive web apps are present already, like Google Maps. All you need to do is pin it to your start screen and have a PWA of Google Maps. It uses your location and works exactly like the app.

Does the on-demand business need Mobile Apps?

Every business is exclusive and so requires a complete solution to cater to the requirements of customers. Today when the customer is too busy to reach out to you, you need to reach them and make it effortless to link with you. This way, you can hike up your sales, and that’s the reason on-demand mobile app development services have created a buzz in the IT market.

The best examples of on-demand businesses are Uber, NetFlix, AirBnB, etc. which have created a niche in the market space. They leveraged customer behavior and revolutionized the way people utilize on-demand services.

What is an on-demand Mobile App all About?

In the simplest term, it is developing custom mobile apps that can quickly and effortlessly meet the customer’s stand-alone requirements. Having a thriving on-demand business model and a user-friendly mobile-based platform, you have the secret formula for making it big.

Some of the essential must-have features to be incorporated are as follows:

• Easy, user-friendly interface to keep the user informed with the latest updates
• Let users add fresh services, edit an existing one, or delete functionality
• Efficient and straightforward order-tracking and delivery management
• Swift and secure online payment process for every transaction
• Tutorials, FAQs, and online help to resolve queries.
• Use of geo-fencing, GPS, and navigation
• Auto-filling address using social media accounts

The use of on-demand is on the rise, and so should the right feature integrations. All the susceptible paths must be looked for to enjoy highly extensible and useful mobile applications. If done correctly, these apps will surely add value to your business, making it more dynamic.

The significant benefits of having an on-demand mobile app are:-

• Provides more value to the customer:
• Help build a strong brand:
• Boosts profits:
• Open doors to unlimited business opportunities

Ways to Determine Your Target Audience

Another critical aspect that needs to be highlighted is the target audience. It is the segment for whom you are developing this application. It will give you a picture of whether the app will be used and the possibility of demand for your mobile app development.

By identifying the target audience for your app, you can perform the following: 

• Features can be developed in accordance with the user preferences
• Marketing campaign strategies can be planned
• The best and most apt monetization techniques can be used

Furthermore, the knowledge of the target audience is crucial for the mobile app development process. For example, if you are developing an online food delivery service mobile app in Manhattan, one can assume that the target audience will be those living in New York.

• Understanding the buyer’s demography, lifestyle, and behavior Conducting extensive surveys – online and offline
• Using various marketing strategies
• Researching competition and competitor apps

The Bottom Line

Earning the trust of your customers for your on-demand mobile app is crucial. It all comes down to the level of convenience, swiftness, and how efficiently your app supports their orders, tracking, payments, and reviews. Ultimately the deciding factor will be the waiting time between placing the order and delivery.

If you all eyes to develop an on-demand app for your business, you can always reach out to us, the USA’s best app development company. We offer flexible, responsive, and custom mobile app development that meets the needs to grow your business.

In recent times, many web application development companies prefer Node.js development, and it is far and wide popular with developers everywhere. Node.js is easy to create APIs and build new inter-operational patterns. Let’s throw some light on why the Node.js platform has the best store for web app development.

Node JS Significance

• Node hosts so many advantages over other backend technologies.
• An open-source, cross-platform server environment and scalable architecture
• Executes JavaScript on the server-side and single language usage
• Asynchronous programming and server-side event-driven API
• It runs on various platforms like Windows, UNIX, Linux, Mac OS, and others
• Node js offers free access and is supported extensively by the community of developers

Full-stack development with JavaScript

JavaScript is the simplest way to build apps in the browser, and browser-server communication is seamless. Node js lets you use JavaScript in the backend too. Debugging becomes much more manageable due to JavaScript’s dynamic nature. This technology is straightforward, easy, and offers far better performance than other technologies.

Promoted by Google Chrome

Chrome’s V8 engine provides a runtime environment where the front-end is operated by JavaScript and Node js’ backend. The browser offers the DOM and the rest of the web platform APIs that make it run faster, and Node js removes the bugs in both front and back.

The function of NPM

Node Package Manager, offers various dependable packages to Node. This package management system helps JavaScript developers to share and reuse the code easily among developers.

Asynchronous Server-end Functionality

Both JavaScript and Node js assist well with asynchronous programming. It makes sure that execution is uninterrupted. An error occurred in one block of code does not hinder the performance of other code blocks. Thus the code blocks are independent of each other, and execution happens smoothly. It heightens the speed and overall performance of the program.

Building Real-time Application

Numerous enterprises and tech startups are developing a substantial part of their backend infrastructure using Node js for real-time applications. Before the advent of Node js, the applications were less efficient and expensive due to high resource utilization. Thus, Node js had paved the way for real-time apps ever since.

Server-Side Rendering (SSR)

Web apps written in JavaScript are capable of functioning without server-side rendering by a Node server. It is because web browsers can render JavaScript along with HTML and CSS on the client-side. Server-side rendering in JavaScript-based web applications makes it useful for search engine optimization. All central Node js frameworks like Express and Koa assist SSR. When using Node, you expose your JSON documents with a REST API for the front-end to read. A JSON database declares query results that can be parsed easily, straightaway by JavaScript. Therefore the amount of logic for building the application layer is reduced.

Node js is leading the way for being the most preferred framework for service-side web application development. We are a top Node js development company in the USA with proven expertise offering our clients top-notch custom software development services. To schedule a discussion with our experts, then dial +1 408-400-3737

Overcoming situations in the development process is, by itself, a challenging task for the developers. Now that several enterprises are opting for microservice architecture, Node js has a prominent role in development. This architecture lets the developers split the application into smaller blocks. These blocks can be developed individually, using various programming technologies, and helps developers to finish the entire task side-by-side in less time. Thus it aids in the agile and agnostic development process.

Node js is a run time environment based on Chrome’s V8 JavaScript engine. It is the go-to technology for startups, enterprises for its speedy development process.

Many leading companies are adopting Node js microservice like GoDaddy, Paypal, Netflix, and many more.

Advantages of Node js microservice

• Non-blocking, event-driven I/O model for top performance real-time web app development
• Allows creating, operating and handling services self-reliantly
• Cuts down much infrastructure so that teams can iterate swiftly
• Abundant modules are accessible for immediate use
• Enhances clarity among developers as they work on separate blocks of web application development. If it nosedives to perform during production, it can be effortlessly secluded and reconfigured
• Offer language and platform freedom for developers
• Efficient resource exploitation and expense optimization

Node js pros and cons are discussed as follows

The Pros:

• Node js supports JavaScript language on both the client and server-side. Thus, hiring separate backend and front-end developers can be avoided and reduce overhead costs.
• Offers top performance as V8 translates JavaScript code into machine code without the need for an interpreter. Also, the run-time environment proliferates the code execution speed tremendously by aiding non-blocking I/O operations.
• Dynamic Community of JavaScript programmers and their contribution is a great advantage.
• Concurrent Request Handling helps execute requests sequentially in a fast manner
• The advantage of caching is that it helps the application load web pages and respond to the user requests quickly, without needing the module code to be executed over again.
• Easy to learn, increases programmer productivity, code reusability, and consumes less time to work with it.
• It facilitates real-time application development like chat apps, games, chatbots, and voice user interface applications like Alexa.

The Cons:

• Unsteady API and the Echma script adds new syntax for writing complex applications, including classes and modules. Thus, programmers have to change the current code base to make it compatible with the Node js API’s latest version.
• It doesn’t have a standard library, and so it becomes hard to achieve regular programming tasks using Node js.
• Not appropriate for heavyweight computing apps As Node js is not supportive of multi-threaded programming yet.

Final Thoughts

Despite the limitations, Node js offers useful features to write several server-side applications, real-time Web APIs, and various networking applications in JavaScript. When it comes to Microservices, it is better first to decide if it suits your requirement from tech experts.

Being the leading Node js development company in the USA, we deliver the scalable solution to get into action soon. You can also hire developers for your project from the best web application development company. Touch base with our experts by calling: +1 408-400-3737

Frequently Asked Question

What is the purpose of Node?
Node lets the developers write code in JavaScript, which runs in a computer process directly instead of in a browser. Node is useful for writing server-side applications with access to the file system, operating system, and everything else necessary for creating fully-functional applications.

What is node js not suitable for?
Node js is not apt for developing heavy computing apps or for performing long-running calculations. It doesn’t support multi-threaded programming as of now. However, it can serve complicated applications more than Ruby. Heavy computations tend to block the inward requests, which results in a decrease in performance.

Is node js better than Java?
If your application involves running loops in millions of calculating tasks, then, in that case, Java will exceed node js. Node is lightweight due to the architecture based on events. It is developed to function as a web server and performs splendidly with servicing lightweight tasks.

Does node js have a future?
Node JS most likely won’t crush. But the chances are that it will match with various options and continue to develop. The future is bright in the front-end world for Node JS as it looks like no front-end development is conceivable without Node. Js, at least for the current time.

The first and foremost challenge in any web application development is choosing the right language. Instead of going with the framework in which the web development company is proficient, it is best to choose the development language based on your requirement. It is crucial because going with the wrong language or an advanced language for a simple requirement can lead to a massive loss of money.

Node.js is a widely-used scripting language, especially for backend development. It offers significant perks such as low time-to-market, dynamic Node.js web applications development, greater agility, and excellent support for highly functional mobile apps development, to mention a few. Node.js is scalable, fast, and very secure.

When to choose Node js?

For simple website development, it needs to display the product varieties, be less secure, and need an economically sufficient programming language for development. But when it comes to complex development requirements, more secure coding should be preferred like Node.js.
Node.js finds its application in the following scenario.

• IoT
  Node.js handles multiple concurrent requests and asynchronous processing. E.g., FitBit.
• Real-time Chats
  Event API functionality and excellent WebSocket support enable the simple implementation of server-side events and push notifications for instant messaging using few code lines. Ex: Whatsapp.
• Complicated SPA
  Asynchronous data flow promotes flawless data transmission. It uses the same JavaScript language to help in less context switching. Ex: LinkedIn, Netflix.
• Real-time Collaboration Tools
  Node.js is highly withstanding as it manages multiple I/O operations by several users without server slowdown problems. It’s apt for Trading platforms and social networking sites.
• Streaming Applications
  Native Stream API helps fractional program download. The rest is stored in the background and can be fetched later when the user requests it.
• Microservice Architecture
  Enables multi-server linking, simplifying into several short processes, and helps multiple teams to work without bringing many changes to the entire application.

Advantages of Node.js for Web App Development

Node.js offers multiple benefits in terms of expediting the development processing, offering simplified solutions, and many more. Take a look at the following,

Use of single language

Node.js uses one language, JavaScript, on both front-end and backend. Thus the development cycle becomes easy and less time-consuming. Also, fewer resources are sufficient, which decreases much of your overhead cost.

Perform fast operations

Event-driven, non-blocking asynchronous I/O model of Node.js handles a large volume of requests from the web and other networks. An asynchronous task is linked to the event loop, a single-threaded loop, and the call back function. Then the rest of the program is executed. On completion of asynchronous operations, the event loop returns to the task and runs call back. Moreover, Reading/writing to the network connection, file system, and database are executed swiftly.

Node Package Manager Increases code reusability

As Node.js is an open-source technology, it has the code repository and comes with every Node.js installation. It includes more than 350,000 packages for creating effective web solutions. Node.js developers can easily access, update, share, and reuse relevant codes. Working on the core applications has never been easier.

Data Streaming

Node.js possess the capabilities of data streaming, which transfers by breaking a large amount of data into manageable chunks. These data chunks consume less memory and prevent slow- down of the device.
Real-time applications – Node.js is ideal for developing real-time applications like chat apps, games, and chatbots because of event-driven architecture. It accepts large requests and has plug-ins that implement a web-socket protocol. Thus two-way communication channels between client and server become seamless, and the performance of the applications holds well even during a traffic surge.

Final Thoughts

PayPal, Uber, Netflix, Walmart, Trello are some of the Brands that are functioning with Node.js development services. Node.js has increased the standards for web app development, and it has become the go-to technology for both start-ups and enterprises alike. If developing a next-gen enterprise app is what you are looking for, then Node.js is the best shot.

We are a top custom software development company providing Enterprise Software and Mobility Solutions to multiple industry verticals. We provide Node.js development services, and on top of that, we can help you decide the apt technology for your web development requirements. Reach us to consult with a technology expert and to receive free quote in 24 hours.

Over the years, advancements in technology have made web design and development to evolve drastically. Websites are equipped with faster loading time, and a simple-to-understand, user-friendly interface. Moreover, user experience expects to meet that of the native mobile applications.

Sophisticated times in development have called for two important technology stacks. They are the MEAN stack and the MERN stack. Each tech stack has its advantages and areas of application. Let’s see elaborately.

They have the same components, MongoDB, ExpressJS, and NodeJS. The only difference is that the MEAN stack has AngularJS, and the MERN stack has ReactJS. Many Angular based web development companies prefer MEAN stack and the one with ReactJS expertise goes for MERN stack development.

MongoDB – schema-less NoSQL class-platform with JSON query language and document-oriented database.

Express or Express.js – an open-source framework for Node.js web application which simplifies web server coding

Node.js is the open-source, cross-platform JavaScript framework for server-side or backend development.

React – an open-source JavaScript front-end library for creating interactive UI

Angular – the open-source structural framework for building front-end applications

AngularJS is a quite a popular framework with MVC architecture. But this architecture is not required in every web application, and it is sufficient if only an abstraction in the UI layer to optimize component code rendering. It is where the ReactJS library meets the requirement.

Speedy development

Sometimes it isn’t clear because both AngularJS and ReactJS provide abstraction at the UI level. Google supports Angular and Facebook for React. AngularJS stand stable and maintains better abstraction for coding and managing files. Whereas ReactJS helps faster code development. Thus being a library, ReactJS performs better than AngularJS.

Extensive Projects

For an enterprise-level project, AngularJS is the first choice. Why because AngualrJS, being a framework, can better support the system with MVC architecture. Here the database and UI code are separated by an intermediate layer, thus making code management easier and updating code even more accessible. ReactJs being just a library can speed up code development but cannot assist much in the place where a robust framework is required.

Using third-party library

When it comes to using third-party libraries, AngularJS scores the point. ReactJS needs additional libraries to support an Http calling to connect to the backend server. Whereas, with AngularJS is a simple plug and play job as it comes with ready-to-use features which allows using third-party libraries instantly.

Architectural structure

Thus we see that both are useful and can meet the requirements that demand reliable, light-weight JavaScript applications. The significant difference lies in their structure – one being a framework and the other being a library. Thus MEAN stack finds its application in building more extensive and complex applications. MERN stack is best for smaller web and mobile applications.

This latest combination

The MERN stack, enables the applications to be built quickly, decrease the setup time and enhances fast development rate. At Tops Infosolutions, we continuously emphasize the user experience, and trending user demands to come first. We are a top web development company in USA and we create robust web and mobile applications using the best applicable technologies. To avail MERN stack development services, drop us your query to contact@topsinfosolutions.com or call us at +1 408-400-3737 to talk with our experts.

MEAN stack brings full stack development under purview of a single programming language, JavaScript. Alongside bringing the best of the frontend and backend technologies under a single basket, MEAN stack inherits security vulnerabilities each of these technologies are susceptible to. Some of the security threats augment when these technologies play together inside the framework. If those vulnerabilities are not subsided by the MEAN stack developers at the time of writing code, they will put the entire organization using those applications at jeopardy.

For example, MongoDB is a NoSQL database and an integral part of the MEAN stack. A common myth is NoSQL means no injections. In reality, MongoDB has a concept of query selector operators. These operators start with a dollar sign: $gt means greater than, $ne means not equal to, $not for negation, etc. If an attacker can inject these queries selector operators into the query, he can alter the logic of that query.

Here the presence of Express.js in MEAN stack makes the situation worse; it acts as a catalyst to NoSQL Injections. When Express sees nested URL encoded parameters in an input, it’s going to automatically parse them. This allows a person to inject a query operator into hid statement and alter the logic of this operation. And that’s only a part of the problem with MongoDB and there are three more technologies with their own share of risks and vulnerabilities.

Let’s take a look at the all the technologies inside MEAN stack and what are the potential security risks they can expose your application to.

1. MongoDB

As I said, MongoDB is immune to SQL injections but not every type of injections. In fact, MongoDB are more susceptible to something called Query Selector Injections or NoSQL Injections than MySQL is to SQL injections. The JSON documents with some neat, little tricks can be altered to achieve some malicious results. This as I mentioned above involve built-in logic operators to alter queries.

Another problem with MongoDB is this that it doesn’t force authentication that means that five year old hacker living next door can query the database with little to no difficulty. The icing on the cake is MongoDB’s optional HTTP and REST interface, which not only puts the database and the sensitive information inside it on the public domain but also the underlying file system.

To make sure, your database is not accessible to anybody make sure you disable HTTP and REST interface. You can configure /etc/mongodb.conf file’s bind_ip, auth,httpinterface, and rest options to contain access to the database and, thus, secure the MongoDB instance as demonstrated below.

Ransom-wares targeting the insecure default conf file on these servers exploited more than forty thousand instances of MongoDB by January 2017.

2. Node

Node.js facilitates the development of web applications with broad backend capabilities:server and networking capabilities. It makes way for real-time bidirectional communications back and forth from server and client. Node.js is a standalone package of Google’s V8 JavaScript engine and; thus, works outside of a web browser.

Developers love Node.js as it allows creating HTTP web servers while building the web applications. The very reason MEAN stack exists; Node.js isn’t without its share of security vulnerabilities. In fact, it inherits all security flaws JavaScript suffers from. In addition, the ability to execute at the server exposes it to a new set of attack vectors. Nevertheless, the CVE database compiles an up-to-date list of Node.JS vulnerabilities.

In a nutshell, full stack development may be the epitome of DevOps; nevertheless it necessitates stringent adherence to protected application development practices. The MEAN stack, and any stack for that matter—be it LAMP, .NET, or MEAN—needs apt controls to make sure that security is baked into an application since the initial phases of development. In the MEAN stack, complete vulnerability assessment and monitoring for web applications, databases, and servers is required.

3. Express

A minimal, flexible web application framework built around Node.js, Express hasmany features that simplify web and mobile application development. Express.js is to Node what Ruby-on-Rails or Sinatra is to the Ruby language.

Unluckily, the framework is susceptible to numerous injection and cross-site attacks and is vulnerable to all of Node.js’s core vulnerabilities.

For example, in MEAN stack, session state client-side stored in JSON Web Token (JWT) is encrypted. Thus, persistent session data server-side makes the application scalable when deployed in clustered servers. However, this handiness comes at a cost, explicitly the incapability to nullify a user’s session. Of course, you can expire the cookie afteryet the server will accept a replayed cookie even when you purged the cookie.

This issue can be moderated by keeping an inner expiration value within the session cookie.

Another problem with Express is this that the Csurf plugin is omitted from GET, HEAD, and OPTIONS methods. Csurf plugin protects web application from cross-site request forgery (CSRF). That is, an application with GET routes will not be protected from CSRF attacks.

That means the below code and the resulting app is vulnerable to CRSF because of the GET part.

To mitigate this, developers should do one of the following:

• Change the /secure/remove Invoice route to use the POST method
• Remove GET from the ignore Methods option
• Apply the Csurf middleware inline to each route requiring protection rather than globally with use()

4. Angular

Angular has inherent Strict Contextual Escaping service ($sce) by default. This service secure Angular from malicious HTML tags (e.g., <script>, etc.), attributes (e.g., onmouseover, onerror, etc.), and URI protocols (e.g., javascript) from data rendered as HTML with the ng-bind-html directive.

The problem is Strict Contextual Escaping service ($sce) can turned off by sceProvider.enabled() method globally while $sce.trustAs methods turn it off per-instance. In short, Angular is quite vulnerable to cross-site scripting (XSS) attacks when binding insecure data as HTML.

The easiest method around this vulnerabilities is to enable $sce service for untrusted bound to the ng-bind-html directive. Removing the $sceProvider.enabled(false) method from the excerpt above means the malicious onerror attribute will be sanitized appropriately.

Another security risk with Angular and thus MEAN stack applications is expression injection. An attacker can enter a curly bracket to Angular template to modify expressions. Aforementioned functions do not take in account expression injection using curly brackets.

To mitigate the risk, sanitize curly brackets from insecure input or by prevent the input from being written inside an Angular template by reducing the scope of the ng-app directive.

Conclusion

MEAN stack development is the epitome of DevOps that forbids insecure development practices. Besides, this approach entails sufficient controls to make sure that security is an integral part of every stage of development.