Node.js is the most popular framework for creating applications that use JavaScript on both the client-side and the server-side. It is light and efficient as its event-based architecture is capable of asynchronous input/output. It unifies web application development on a single language rather than different languages for client and server scripts. Since it is the most popular javascript framework, it comes with a lot of popular packages that can extend the functionality of Node.js by hundred times. Given below, is a list for fifty most popular Node.js packages that extend its capabilities:
- Lodash:- Lodash is one of the most popular Node.js packages that allows programmers to write precise and manageable codes. It has a group of all-purpose utilities that make normal programming tasks easier. This module also contains a group of functions that focus on functional programming and standard string operations.
- Weekly Downloads: more than 24 million
- Installation:
npm i lodash
- Chalk:- Chalk is an expressive API that gives high performance. It can nest styles and detect auto color support. This module is clean, focused, and actively maintained.
- Weekly Downloads: more than 29 million
- Installation:
npm i chalk
- Request:- Request module is used for making HTTP requests. It has been designed simply and supports HTTP. It follows redirects automatically.
- Weekly Downloads: more than 16 million
- Installation:
npm i request
- Commander:- This is a powerful command-line interface for Node.js. It is fast,light-weight and expressive. It also provides a set of built-in features like generic parsing arguments, command declaration, automated help messages, etc.
- Weekly Downloads: more than 33 million
- Installation:
npm i commander
- Yarn:- Yarn is fast, reliable and extremely secure. It caches all the downloaded packages, hence never requires to download the same package over and over again. It works concurrently most of the time to maximize resource utilization.
- Weekly Downloads: more than 100,000
- Installation:
npm i yarn
- Express:- This is a Node.js module focusing on high performance. It is fast and provides a minimal web framework for Node.js. It supports a robust routing and consists of HTTP helpers.
- Weekly Downloads: more than 11 million
- Installation:
npm i express
- Async:- This is a utility module that provides direct and powerful functions to work with asynchronous javascript. It was originally designed for use with Node.js but it can also be used directly with the browser.
- Weekly Downloads: more than 25 million
- Installation:
npm i async
- Debug:- A small debugging utility modeled after the core debugging technique of Node.js. This works for both Node.js and web browsers.
- Weekly Downloads: more than 54 million
- Installation:
npm i debug
- Bluebird:- Bluebird is a promise based package with the main focus on new features and high performance. Bluebird includes a lot of features that original promise lacks.
- Weekly Downloads: more than 16 million
- Installation:
npm i bluebird
- Underscore:- Underscore is another one of the most popular Node.js packages that provide functional programming helpers without expanding any built-in objects. It contains both everyday functional helpers as well as specialized functional helpers.
- Weekly Downloads: more than 6 million
- Installation:
npm i underscore
- Webpack:- Webpack is a bundle for packages that is extremely flexible. The main purpose of a webpack is to create a bundle of javascript files for usage in the browser. It can create a single bundle or multiple chunks and supports all browsers that are ES5-compliant.
- Weekly Downloads: more than 9 million
- Installation:
npm i webpack
- JQuery:- JQuery is a fast, client-side javascript package that runs on the browser. JQuery is small and feature-rich and serves information on the browser.
- Weekly Downloads: more than 2 million
- Installation:
npm i jquery
- Cheerio:- Cheerio is a subset of core jquery that removes all DOM inconsistencies and browser cruft from the jquery package. It is very fast and incredibly flexible.
- Weekly Downloads: more than 3 million
- Installation:
npm i cheerio
- Browserify:- Browserify analyzes recursively all the require() calls in the application and makes a bundle that can be served to the browser in a single <script> tag.
- Weekly Downloads: more than 700,000
- Installation:
npm i browersify
- Puppeteer:- This is a Node.js package that provides a high-level API that controls Chrome over DevTools Protocol. Although puppeteer runs headless by default, it can also be configured to run full( not- headless)
- Weekly Downloads: more than 1.5 million
- Installation:
npm i puppeteer
- Faker:- Faker can generate massive amounts of fake data in the Node.js and browser.
- Weekly Downloads: more than 1 million
- Installation:
npm i faker
- Through:- This provides the easiest way to create a readable and writeable stream. The basis of most of the synchronous streams in an event stream is dependent upon this function.
- Weekly Downloads: more than 10 million
- Installation:
npm i through
- Uglify JS3:- This is a javascript toolkit that is used as a minifier, compressor, parser, and beautifier. Uglify can take multiple input files. These files will be parsed in sequence and then any compressor options can be applied.
- Weekly Downloads: more than 15.7 million
- Installation:
npm i uglify-js
- Bootstrap:- Node.js directly supports the most popular CSS framework. It allows to dynamically insert bootstrap element on the go.
- Weekly Downloads: more than 1.9 million
- Installation:
npm i bootstrap
- Gulp:- Gulp is simple and platform-agnostic. Gulp toolkit helps in automating time-consuming tasks. It has built-in support for source maps.
- Weekly Downloads: more than 1.3 million
- Installation:
npm i gulp
- Colors:- This module is used to get color and style in Node.js console. This also contains various background, text styles, and some extras like rainbow, trap, random, etc.
- Weekly Downloads: more than 13 million
- Installation:
npm i colors
- Mocha:- Mocha is a simple, flexible testing framework on javascript. It is used for both Node.js and the browser. It is the most dependent module which is independent.
- Weekly Downloads: more than 3.4 million
- Installation:
npm i mocha
- Jest:- Jest is a javascript testing framework that simplifies UI testing. It gives instant feedback, contains snapshot testing and is developer ready.
- Weekly Downloads: more than 5.3 million
- Installation:
npm i jest
- Chai:- This is an assertion package that can be used within the browser. A Node.js and a browser can be easily paired with any javascript framework using Chai. It also offers a robust plugin architecture for extending its interfaces.
- Weekly Downloads: more than 3 million
- Installation:
npm i chai
- Winston:- This is a simple and universal logging package. It supports multi-transports that are nothing but storage devices for logs. Winston is flexible and extensible as it aims at decoupling parts of logging.
- Weekly Downloads: more than 3 million
- Installation:
npm i winston
- TensorFlow JS:- This is a hardware-accelerated javascript package used for training and developing models regarding machine learning. These created models can be used directly in a browser or Node.js.
- Weekly Downloads: more than 125
- Installation:
npm i tensorflow
- Forever:- Forever is an uncomplicated command-line interface that ensures continuous running of script i.e. forever. There are two ways to use it, either through the command line or by using forever in your code.
- Weekly Downloads: more than 100 thousand
- Installation:
npm i forever
- Nodemon:- This is a tool that helps to create Node.js application. Whenever file changes in the directory are detected, Nodemon automatically restarts the Node application. Nodemon is a replacement wrapper for Node.js and does not require any additional changes in the source code.
- Weekly Downloads: more than 2 million
- Installation:
npm i nodemon
- Kontra.js:- This is a microgame package based on javascript optimal for js13kGames. The main goal is to implement basic game requirements allowing game size to be limited. It is fast, light, modular and extensible. This is mainly used for prototyping.
- Weekly Downloads: more than 190
- Installation:
npm i kontra
- ESLint:- This is a tool used for finding and reporting patterns in javascript code. It works similar to JSLint and JSHint with a few exceptions like using Espree for javascript parsing, etc. ESLint does style checking as well as traditional linting.
- Weekly Downloads: more than 8 million
- Installation:
npm i eslint
- Sharp:- This module is related to image processing. Sharp is a blazing fast node.js module that converts large images of common formats into small, web-friendly formats of varying dimensions.
- Weekly Downloads: more than 575 thousand
- Installation:
npm i sharp
- Yargs:- Yargs helps to build interactive command-line tools. This is done by parsing the statements and creating a precise user interface. It provides commands, options, a dynamically generated help menu based upon the passed statements, etc.
- Weekly Downloads: more than 35 million
- Installation:
npm i yargs
- WS:- This is a node.js web socket package that is simple to use and exceedingly fast. It has been thoroughly tested and provides an optimal console for node.js.
- Weekly Downloads: more than 18 million
- Installation:
npm i ws
- JSHint:- This static code tool checks code quality through linting. Linting is a process of running a program that checks for errors. JSHint detects errors in javascript code. It is community-driven and extremely flexible.
- Weekly Downloads: more than 500 thousand
- Installation:
npm i jshint
- Socket.io:- This is another one of the most popular Node.js packages available. This module enables real-time tasks on two-way event-based communication. It consists of a node.js server and a node.js client. This module helps in creating a simple and expedient API. It is used for real-time data transfer. It implements web sockets in Node.js. This package is mostly used for real-time chatting applications.
- Weekly Downloads: more than 3 million
- Installation:
npm i socket.io
- Sails:- This is a helpful web framework that ensures simplicity to build custom, business-grade node.js applications. It is designed to look like MVC architecture but provides support for more modern web applications and APIs. It is particularly beneficial for building real-time features like chat.
- Weekly Downloads: more than 30,000
- Installation:
npm i sails
- Shelljs:- This is one of the most important and most popular Node.js packages. It allows you to run terminal commands using Node.js API. This package eliminated the dependency on shell commands at the operating system layer.
- Weekly Downloads: more than 30,000
- Installation:
npm i shelljs
- Agenda:- This is a scheduling package for node.js that offers minimal overhead. The main aim of the agenda is to keep it’s codebase small. It works best for simple and MongoDB backed applications.
- Weekly Downloads: 6+ million
- Installation:
npm i agenda
- Request-Promise:- As the name suggests it is used for making requests with promise resolver. It is backed by Bluebird and has more than 2 million downloads.
- Weekly Downloads: more than 2.5 million
- Installation:
npm i request-promise
- Nodemailer:- As the name suggests, it helps in sending e-mails from node.js applications. It has a heavy focus on security and uses HTML content as well as plain text for an alternative.
- Weekly Downloads: more than 800,000
- Installation:
npm i nodemailer
- fs-extra:- This is a replacement for native fs. It contains extra methods for native fs objects and is one of the most dependent node.js packages.
- Weekly Downloads: more than 20 million
- Installation:
npm i fs-extra
- Bodyparser:- This is a node.js body parsing middleware. It splits incoming requests into a middleware. This module provides JSON body-parser, text body-parser, URL-encoded form body-parser, and Raw body-parser.
- Weekly Downloads: more than 11 million
- Installation:
npm i body-parser
- MySQL:- This is a node.js driver for MySQL written in javascript. This is used for creating a database and does not requires compiling.
- Weekly Downloads: more than 550,000
- Installation:
npm i mysql
- Koa:- This is a next-generation web app framework designed by the same team that made Express. The main aim of this module is to make server writing fast and enjoyable.
- Weekly Downloads: more than 393,000
- Installation:
npm i koa
- Mongoose:- This module provides direct and unevasive schema-based solutions for the application database. It includes all queries, validations, built-in type casting, etc.
- Weekly Downloads: more than 600,000
- Installation:
npm i mongoose
- Passport:- This is an uncomplicated, inconspicuous middleware for node.js using various strategies for authenticating requests
- Weekly Downloads: more than 750,000
- Installation:
npm i passport
- Yo (Yeoman):- This is a command-line interface tool used for running Yeoman generators.
- Weekly Downloads: more than 70,000
- Installation:
npm i yo
- Zmq:- This module contains bindings for io.js and Node.js to ZeroMQ. It is an asynchronous and elevated messaging package used extensively in concurrent applications.
- Weekly Downloads: more than 10,000
- Installation:
npm i zmq
- Q:- This module is a package containing objects called Promises. This object returns a value or thrown exception which a function may eventually provide.
- Weekly Downloads: more than 8 million
- Installation:
npm i q
- Axios:- This is an HTTP client based on Promise for Node.js and the browser. It intercepts requests and response and transforms it. It has automatic transformations for JSON data.
- Weekly Downloads: more than 8 million
- Installation:
npm i axios
