Node vs PHP

Is anyone here prefers Node over PHP for Backend?

Comments

[Haikel Fazzani]

Node.js is a JavaScript runtime and PHP is language !! PHP vs Javascript or you can compare Nodejs vs Zend Engine. be productive and avoid comparing languages .. all languages are good ...

[Aleksey Razbakov]

My question is not about language, but about Server-Side Environment. How would you let your server handle request?

P.S. Should I put PHP-FPM in original question instead? :D

[Andrei Dascalu]

You should really make your question clear as to the scope of the expected answer.

You can mention fpm, sure, but fpm is simply the interpreting engine.

As to how to let the server handle requests, it's more about what features you want and whether you have external constraints from other systems in your stack.

Theoretically both node and fpm benefit from a reverse proxy or lb in front of them. The downside of fpm is that it needs a compatible web server as opposed to node.

Fpm only interprets php code, so the proxy in front needs to route those requests for php files and be able to serve non+php directly, unless you want to write a generic we server in PHP (not efficient). Therefore php works with nginx or lighttpd unless you go modphp and use apache with the embedded module (where prefork raises questions on performance VS the multithreaded nature of nginx)

Node has no such constraints. It can work with plain proxies like haproxy or even serve requests straight up (but you would need to pay attention to stuff like security).

In a containerized environment, php shows some limitations in that nginx +fpm is a bit of a pain to setup efficiently (think kubernetes) and you end up using roughly 3 lb's in front of fpm, nevermind the inherent networking overhead (usually I go with apache there)

Node is easier from this perspective, but switching ecosystems coming from php is not that easy.

Myself I ended up going with Roadrunner for php, as it is wrapped in a very efficient golang server + enforces psr compliant requestd/responses

[Aleksey Razbakov]

If you would start a new project, what would you make as your backend? Node or PHP? Express or Laravel? Let's say you write a REST API, what stack would you use and why?

[Andrei Dascalu]

I would make my decision based on the goal. For example I have projects that leave a lot of room for learning. I would go with express in this case just to improve my knowledge, but I would also use it in cases where node packages may be superior to php (in case of grpc for example)

Otherwise I would use php but I would not use any of the major frameworks (I have a performance comparison of returning 100k json encoded rows from two related tables, Laravel is the worst performer of all).
I would favor a microservices framework like Swoole if I weren't inclined to make a monolithic API. Otherwise I would use a microframework like Symlex but nowadays I sort of favor a custom solution built around a fast router (there's nikic but also the phpleague router). For an API there aren't many requirements: fast router with Middleware support, DI container (phpdi is excellent) and maybe doctrine for a strong orm with several layers of caching. Of course, logging and some metrics/observability would be nice.
I have a sort of personal 'framework' that rivals symfony 5 in performance but it still lags behind the likes of ubiquity 2 and symlex.
But my main requirement from a php stack would be to handle routing for psr requests and responses and neither symfony nor laravel do that.
This comes from the fact that nowadays I consider it mandatory for a php api to be deployable with roadrunner (symlex is built for roadrunner compatibility), in this case php blows node/express out of the water and can close in on rust performance for example.

[Michael J. Ryan]

I wouldn't use either for grpc... If you're interested in container orchestration like kubernetes, I might use node for it. You can't use grpc+cluster modules together iirc.

[Roman Stejskal]

Node all the way.

JavaScript syntax is much nicer than PHP, also more concise, and actually OO. JavaScript doesn't need special handling of UTF-8, unlike PHP, where my scripts very much like to save mumble-jumble into the database instead of the actual characters.

Node also has a proper package system, which lack of has bitten my ass many times in PHP (when the official docs tell to you composer install a package but you actually can't because a third dependency of both of them has a version mismatch... Looking at you, Lumen), but never in Node, where each package can require its own version of anything and it just won't clash.

TypeScript.

Also, native JSON support is nice when working with JSON based REST APIs or services in general.

[Coury Ryan Richards]

Composer works great and you can 100% specify versions. Also, composer is the only one which do you prefer npm, bower, yarn... whatever comes next.

Syntax is an opinion. I mean don't get me wrong php could have helped itself with naming and parameter ordering consistency. Some people like ruby and I know cold fusion evangelist.

PHP has type hinting or you could move to Java or .net if you wany types and "actual oop/d".

Json is pretty straightforward with json_encode/json_decode. Where a lot of other languages you need an entire library to make that work on complex objects (no not js).

As for the question. I would say js/node are hot to trot right now. There are a lot of companies willing to pay top dollar for that skill set.

If you are starting a company though php can get all the work done for a fraction of the cost. Php developer (who creat the same systems) are very underpaid.

Also, realize whatever is best right now won't be in 10 years and you should always be evolving your skillset.

Also realize that best is very tricky and depends a lot on what you are doing.

My personal experience is Java, python,php and js. But I've gotten stuff done in ruby, cold fusion and .net.

Server wise node for js seems pretty standard. PHP has Apache mod-php which is well documented. If you are making an API I think php-fpm would be a good alternative although I usually run into issues when it comes to returning static content like images or css files. Still have not found a good solution for that without some hacky methods.

[Aleksey Razbakov]

JavaScript syntax is much nicer than PHP

Can you please share some nice projects in Node? Do you consider this github.com/HugoDF/express-bull-es6 as a good practice?

I am lacking some abstraction and organization of the code that PHP has.

[Roman Stejskal]

You can take a look at Example Node (Express + Mongoose) codebase containing real world examples.

What I meant specifically by syntax is, e.g.,

• no $ for variables,
• object literals { key: value } vs [ 'key' => value ],
• anonymous functions (args) => retVal vs function (args) use (vars) { return retVal; }

What abstractions and organization of code do you mean?

[Thiago Dias]

when people say simple sh*t like this i can't do nothing but wonder what the engineers who made complex frameworks such Symfony and ZEND would say lol

[Vlastimil Pospichal]

I prefer PHP.

[Aleksey Razbakov]

Symfony or Laravel?

[Vlastimil Pospichal]

Vanilla MVC.

[Aleksey Razbakov]

No frameworks?

[Vlastimil Pospichal]

No frameworks - some thin boilerplates only. PDO for databases, XSLT for templates. Model 55 lines, router 10 lines. Without any HTML inside.

[Tshivhula Tshilidzi]

The question is not clear since you comparing two different things. Assuming you comparing PHP and Javascript. I prefer working with Javascript just because I think it's best to write in one language because in most cases you end up writing Javascript anyway. Php itself is still a solid language!!!

[Aleksey Razbakov]

Let's say you need to write a newsletter system that would send email to 1k users weekly. Would you write this script in Javascript or PHP? Would you use any framework for that? What would your cronjob look like?

[chris-richter]

I do something like that from firebase using AWS-SES with a nodejs cloud function (like lamda in AWS). I don't use the cloud scheduler for it, but that certainly could be done.

Similar logic lives in other functions that use pubsub for transactional emails and alerts.

The farther I can get away from email tasks and servers, the better. 1,000 emails is $0.10.

[Roman Stejskal]

Everything in JavaScript is an object, with properties, methods... Try 'string'->length in PHP.

The fact it's using prototypes instead of classes doesn't mean it's not object oriented.

[mjhd]

This is a point of great contention, it really depends on how broadly you define an object, I agree that native classes are a mandate for OOP, which is why PHP is actually object oriented. The question to me is, “is object oriented programming SIGNIFICANTLY different than a custom data structure” - any language can add objects in the abstract, but the point is fidelity of class to struct comparison with respect to the language...

[Stuart Slaugh]

Javascript is not OOP. When Mr.Stejskal claims everything is an object with methods & properties, he demonstrates the fact that a lot of very good developers know very little about JS. Yes, almost everything is an object, but the semantic meaning of that word is quite different. JS objects are very loosely organized properties and/or methods. Data hiding is possible, but it's not simply a question of declaring a property private. You have to build that feature yourself with closures. Because it is much more accurate to compare JS to Lisp or Scheme! Most problems in JS are solved by combining discreet functions. You can write performant efficient code without using any OO patterns whatsoever. Prototypes are NOT equivalent to, e.g. Java objects. You do not instantiate an instance of an object with a class. There ARE no classes in JS. Object literals can in fact modify their prototype, and this change becomes available to all objects that share that ptototype. Prototypes basically describe the capability of a particular object. They are much closer to function declarations than traditional objects. The 'new' operator and constructor functions do not behave like they would in Java. As Mjhd stated, that's syntactic sugar aimed at OO developers.

[Roman Stejskal]

We're arguing that PHP, which does not even have first-class support for classes (you have to use strings to pass them around, and ::class just expands to a string) is somehow more OO than JavaScript. PHP, where primitives have no attributes or methods, is more OO than a language in which basically everything is an object.

Take a look at Smalltalk, designed by Alan Kay, who coined the term "object-oriented programming". In Smalltalk, everything is an object. Number, string, file, compiler, you name it, it's an object. In fact, a class is an object which creates instances. Right.

You also don't write typical classes like in C++, Java or C#. Instead, there is an Object object which accepts a subclass message in which you describe how instances of that subclass will look like. That description itself is an object of the Metaclass class.

Smalltalk has single inheritance and every class inherits from a superclass.
The Integer class inherits from Number, which in turn inherits from Magnitude, and Magnitude inherits from Object, which is the root object. Much like prototypes in JavaScript, eh?

Also, classes, being just objects, can accept messages! There's no new MyClass construct, you send a message to the class object asking it to instantiate and return a new instance of itself.

Heck, even our well known if condition breaks OO design. In Smalltalk, a comparison like a < b gives you an object of the Boolean class which has ifTrue and ifFalse methods. There's no usual if (condition) { code } else { code } construct.

The class keyword as we know it from C++, Java, C# or PHP is not a mandate of object-oriented language. Using objects that communicate via messages and nothing but that is a mandate for object-oriented language.

PHP fails at this, and so does JavaScript. Neither of them is fully object-oriented, obviously, but I dare to say that JavaScript is much closer to what an object-oriented language looks like than PHP.

[Laughing Raven]

There are too many know-it-alls in this world. The comments people have made on your post support that.
As for the question, I think it depends on how the back end will be used and in what environment.

[Aleksey Razbakov]

Do you have experience in both?

[Laughing Raven]

I have been in this business long enough to know that having a "favorite language" is foolish. There is only the problem and then the solution. Languages are simple a vehicle to solve a problem. The real mark of excellence is understanding the domain of interest in such a way as to plan an effective solution. PHP is good in some situations and Node in others. Whereas there spheres of appropriateness overlap somewhat, by and large they were created for different problem spaces.

[octopoulos]

I have professional experience with both PHP (almost 15 years, from 4.3 to 7.1) and Node.js (2 years, however I already knew javascript, so I wasn't starting from scratch). I'm no longer using PHP for any project, as to me, there's no comparison. I always felt PHP was a big mess, with poor backward compatibility
(just showing how poorly designed it is) and very prone to difficult to find bugs, and also, I don't like stateless systems and with PHP you need to keep saving and reloading a state to approach a stateful system, which also slows down the request. With good programming in Node.js, you can achieve much faster speed and much more easily (no need for the above tricks). Something like caching is a piece of cake in Node, or anything involving real time, such as a chat.

I think a lot of PHP users who never tried Node.js are going to say PHP is better, but I think people who have in experience in both most probably prefer Node.js, by far.

[Aleksey Razbakov]

We have common experience. Same story here. Recently I discovered Symfony Workflow which I love so much, but I can't really imagine how to build something similar with Node. Could you have a look at dev.to/razbakov/symfony-workflow-a...

[Thiago Dias]

i bet a thousand dollars that you never used Symfony or Laravel, or even TDD.

[BrainBust]

There are quite a few tricks to running nodejs at scale in production and the people that have a lot of experience with it wont be very willing to share them as it's their bread and butter. But i guess the same goes for php and large scaled applications.

Here are just a few:

Cluster and cpu bind your nodejs instances, since it's single threaded you're able to cluster all your instances under a master thread (rpc bus). Use a decent process manager like pm2 that does the work for you. pm2.keymetrics.io/

Keep remembering it's event based and use it to it's full potential. Code runs topdown but logic does not. Doing something simple as 'class myEmitter extends EventEmitter' can go a very long way.

Let your app crash, if it crashes make sure it does so in an environment before production, so you can fix it. Never leave a nodejs app in an uncertain state. This goes hand in hand with making sure your app is stateless. If it crashes in production then you made a mistake that should o've never reached production deployment to begin with, costing your company money or even SLAs.

Use active frameworks, npm is one of the biggest packagers out there, both nodejs as browserland, but many package are not actively maintained, search for libraries you know will be supported and bugfixed. Like nestjs.com/

[Aleksey Razbakov]

I am doing my project with Node already more than a year now. Cloud functions in Firebase and REST with Express. It got wild and chaotic. I can't get it organized. I can't even test it properly. While at work I am getting deeper with Symfony, which got all those Bundles, Interfaces, DI.

So I am hesitating now on how to proceed. I want to get most of logic out of cloud functions and do them as microservices. What I want to achieve is a good logging and some admin panel to be able to navigate quickly and flexible through the data. So far I understand that the best way to connect microservices is through some kind of queue and state machine. Firebase has a big limitation on filtering (which I need most for admin) and I am afraid I can't control the costs (it can get wild with more data), so I want to move all logic on own server and be able limit what and when to process. So far all triggers are on onWrite functions of Firestore documents. So it can get out of control real quick. I haven't found yet any alternative to Symfony in Node yet, that can allow me to do all the things. Neither I can migrate 100% to PHP, because there are some packages that only available in Node.

After a while working with Firebase it gets annoying, because you have to find workarounds to build your data model. Normalized thinking from MySQL you can forget right away. Neither NoSQL thinking works, because Firebase is not flexible enough with queries.

It's very painful and annoying. I already have an idea how to build it with API Platform in a way, but I want to give it a chance everything based on Node. Unfortunately I can't find good examples of something complex built on Node and it's like walking around and trying to find all the small pieces first and build a new thing. That always felt wrong in PHP world. There is always something working out there, some framework, some concept, some structure. In Node it feels like lots of small libraries which do the same thing and have releases faster than I deploy a new version of the app. And sometimes projects just get archived without any explanation of what happened.

I still have hopes that I have wrong perception and it's just takes time to learn and find a right thing.

[Matas Lesinskas]

In short it depends. Use node.js if you work with real-time socket io app, event based system or with multiple threads.
That might be simpler than trying to achieve something like that in php.
On another hand php let's you write really nice run and exit programs faster. Also with php it's really nice to work in oop and with variables, because you don't need to handle undefined, null and other similar problems. Also I like php arrays and JavaScript fuckery kind of sucks.

Overall I use php on large projects where I need stable and secure system.

Node.js is kind of new and still you can't trust it on Enterprise level.

If you read somewhere that php is insecure it's wrong. People who never worked in php and back end wrote it or they are just script kiddes who used old WordPress and got spam and viruses inserted. Tho we can all agree WordPress is trash. Why they still use plain php for templates? Lol.