Being the most diverse and ever-changing landscape, the concept of web development is mushrooming everywhere and claiming big. PHP and Node.js are just two of a variety of sought after skills as demand heats up this year and in the upcoming years. Both the technologies have the potential to manage apps of any complexity; they are built around different concepts and architectures.

Once you get to know a new technology, the ultimate challenge for developers turns out to be how to adopt it all of a sudden. Back-end developers are often seen confused between Node.js and PHP. The following post emphasizes on which is the best for server-side development that turns out to be a long-standing and mature solution or to give newcomers a try. The technologies being at the top of the list for back-end programming often confuses people. Therefore, you must be familiar with the advantages and limitations.

PHP

This interpreted server-side programming language was initially installed as a module in Apache or Nginxweb servers to write server-side apps and connect with databases. With a declarative style of writing code, programmers aren’t bound in any limitations regarding the arrangement of code and its structure. Its advantages include:

• Easy code
• Simple configuration of the development environment
• A wide support for hosting service
• A code base that’s powerful
• Ability to support many frameworks and CMS (WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, Laravel, Symfony, Codeigniter).
• A massive as well as a supportive community
• Best Portability (can be run on almost any server and platform)
• An extensive library of instructions and FAQs

Node.js

Instead of calling Node.js a language, you can call it a perfect solution to execute JavaScript code on the server-side. Because of this, JavaScript can be used beyond the client side. As a result, the young language is successfully used by many large companies including Microsoft, Yahoo, LinkedIn, and PayPal. Built upon an event-driven programming paradigm, it accelerates software creation. Its benefits include:

• Built-in server support
• Easy to learn
• A single syntax for both the front-end and the back-end Excellent for working with large files
• Flexibility

What is the difference between NodeJS and PHP?

Both are back-end technologies, but Node.js can offer an advantage if you’re looking to have a totally JavaScript technology stack across both the front and back ends.

When to use PHP?

• Centralized Server- If you aren’t planning to scale applications across multiple servers, LAMP stack can be used. However, this might change depending on project requirements and growth.
• Portability- Being a high portable language, the cheap costs of web hosting and the availability of the servers for PHP is comparable to none. To be precise, PHP can run on any platform featuring Apache, IIS and a supported database system installed. This makes applications portable and easy to deploy.

When to use Node.js?

• Same Language- In case, if your project involves software stacks such as MEAN stack, Node.js has to be taken into account. This involves everything from MongoDB, Express.js, AngularJS, dynamic single page applications to server-side technologies and Front end technologies like AngularJS, Backbone.js or React.js.
• Real-time Data– Being appropriate for applications that require real-time data, Node.js is highly recommended for financial applications as JavaScript itself is not reliable when it comes to numbers as everything is integer or float and not much separation is done between the types.
• Speed- Nodejs is faster than PHP when it comes to execution speed, if speed is what you require for your application, such as a browser-based multiplayer game or a chat application, Node.js is a great choice than PHP.

Conclusion

Choosing between Node.js and PHP is definitely not easy. All you require knowing is the type of application you are about to create, have you considered the hosting requirements of your client yet, and what is the speed of development. I mean if you are looking for a standardized solution with an extensive hosting support, using PHP is the best decision to take. On the other hand, Node.js is a better option for RTAs (Real-time Applications) such as chats, collaboration apps and SPAs (Single-page Applications).