NodeJS with Java RESTful backend?

Question

I require some advice in terms of choice of language, I hope that I'm allowed to ask this question here.

To provide some framework information:
As from next week, I'll be following a Java course to get my graduate degree in programming.
For this graduate, they mention that we'll need to develop a webapp in Java.
At the same time, coincidence wants that we are currently developing a webapp that allows users to search popular activities (events) and follow hashtags to render a specific activity feed.

For the front end we currently use some client libraries (Marionette, Backbone, Underscore, Requirejs).
For the server front end (router, rendering server pages), we currently use nodejs.

The question is if it would be a good choice to use Java to build the REST service (to serve both the server and client front ends). The webapp includes a social network, organisers can create their own profile, users can bookmark all sorts of things, ... well, there will be pretty database intensive actions (we'll be using a relatively complex relational model with MySQL).
We might still be using Node to handle push notifications with web sockets but we haven't really discussed this yet.

Since we'll get time at school to work on our project in group, I'd have plenty of time to build the backend REST api with Java which seems like a huge opportunity for me in terms of time. I'm just wondering if there would be any real tradeoffs to do it with Java for this purpose.

Thanks.

Adam Davies · Accepted Answer · 2015-08-08 12:21:03Z

4

I think this would be a huge opportunity to build a REST backend in Java.

Take a look at Spring for a fast and effective way to server HTML

Also you could look at Spring Boot for serving REST APIs. If you follow the tutorials you'll be up an running in minutes.

Good luck

answered Aug 8, 2015 at 12:21

Adam Davies

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3 Comments

Trace Over a year ago

Thanks for the links. Any tradeoffs you have in mind for not using Node to deliver the backend?

Adam Davies Over a year ago

Node is a very easy way to get stuff up and running fast. Using Java + Spring will give you a whole ecosystem of goodies. Such as security framework, clustering, dependency injection, database management etc. Java + Spring is very enterprise scale, while node is very start-up scale (generalisation). In terms of complexity, I don't think there is much in it. Java used to be complex and difficult(ish) to learn, but nowadays its all fairly straight forward - as you'll see the the tutorials.

Trace Over a year ago

Cool, I will learn it at the course anyway; Spring is part of the program. Thanks!

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