Node.js Foundation Embraces Express Web Server Framework

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As Node.js continues to gain momentum as the dominant variant of JavaScript being used inside the enterprise, the Node.js Foundation today announced it plans to primarily use software owned by IBM to create a Node.js web server framework project.

Express – based on the framework that IBM gained when it acquired Strongloop last year — in the last two years has been downloaded 53 million times and serves as the framework relied on by tools such as kraken.js, sails.js and Loopback to simplify development of Node.js applications.

The Linux Foundation intends to combine Express with Node.js modules created by Doug Wilson, a prolific independent developer, to provide the core elements of the Node.js web server framework project.

For all intents and purposes, Mikael Rogers, community manager of the Node.js Foundation, says Express is already a de facto Node.js standard. Creating a project under the auspices of The Linux Foundation means that vendors and customers alike can now have confidence that there will be a Node.js web server framework that will be further developed with the interest of the entire Node.js community in mind.

In general, Strongloop CEO Juan Carlos Soto says, Node.js is not so much superseding other programming languages in the enterprise as it is making it simpler to extend backend services written in, for example, Java to a much broader range of front-end applications using a new tier of middleware. In fact, Soto says that from a programming perspective, we now live in a polyglot universe.

How quickly each IT organization adapts to that new reality will naturally vary. But as enterprise IT continues to evolve, it’s clear that there is now a direct relation between the value of a backend service and the total number of front-end applications capable of invoking it.