CGI Using Node.js

by drinchev • 12 years ago

131 84 12 years ago

thomas4019• 12 years ago

Anyone have any ideas on the performance impact of this vs a typical NodeJS installation? I imagine there's a lot more overhead from starting up the process each time. A pretty cool idea but seems like this loses the benefits of NodeJS, speed and scalability.

dhaivatpandya• 12 years ago

It would have been better if implemented under FastCGI which solves the one-process-per-request problem. I guess the intended benefit of the project isn't really the Node eventloop, it's that it allows developers to use the same language on the frontend and backend.

o_____________o6• 12 years ago

Yes, but don't underestimate the value of penetration into cheaper hosts like DreamHost and Godaddy. PHP has always had quality issues, but survives on its eternal ubiquity, which is in no small part because of the CGI model.

Vendan• 12 years ago

Um, I would say it's mostly cause of mod_php support in apache, not cgi mode. Also, the fact that 5 minutes gets you AMP installed on just about any OS.

On the topic of this site though, 3 exclamation marks on the title? Really???

allendoerfer3• 12 years ago

We had this 21 years ago: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netscape_Enterprise_Server

SwellJoe• 12 years ago

I only remember the server supporting Java servlets and Perl/sh/etc. CGI. Was there a JavaScript interpreter/runtime built into it, too?

allendoerfer3• 12 years ago

I am actually just 2 years older than this thing, but Wikipedia said so, yes.

angersock• 12 years ago

That was before async was discovered, an innovation by the Node development team.

allendoerfer3• 12 years ago

Irony does not work well on the interweb, my friend.

To clear things up:

a) the Node team did not invent async programming

b) you kill the event loop, if you spawn it per request using CGI

jonursenbach• 12 years ago

Yes, let's discredit everything the Node community has done.

icedchai• 12 years ago

Yes, I remember this. It had Netscape Livewire (I think that's what it was called?) that let you write very PHP-like server-side JS.

(It was terribly unstable, by the way.)

Floens• 12 years ago

I like this idea, especially for a replacement if you want a quick, single file script online and don't want to use PHP.

Does anyone know if there is something similar to this but with FastCGI?

chubot• 12 years ago

Does it actually use a new node.js process for every request? I thought that node was kinda slow to start up because of the JIT and so forth.

_jh5l• 12 years ago

This is wrong way. Keep Node.js where it has to be

o_____________o6• 12 years ago

Diversity is a good thing.

louischatriot• 12 years ago

Using 90s technologies with node is not really diversity, it's punishing yourself on purpose ...

pjmlp2• 12 years ago

On the garbage bin?

q3k• 12 years ago

I hope this is a joke.

rkrzr• 12 years ago

Ah, I'm glad to see I'm not the only one who thought this was a joke. I'll repost this on April 1st, I think.

steakejjs• 12 years ago

This might be a good time to post the link to Facebook's XHP

https://www.facebook.com/notes/facebook-engineering/xhp-a-ne...

I've been using XHP at work and love the improvements it has made to the new code we are writing.

Posting this might not seem relevant, but the examples of "replacing php with javascript" show one of the ugliest parts of PHP, and that is when presentation becomes super tangled with business logic.

XHP is really really nice for outputting the contents of an array into HTML (for example..it has many other really nice uses), and it would be very cool to see them do something like that.

o_____________o6• 12 years ago

show one of the ugliest parts of PHP, and that is when presentation becomes super tangled with business logic

You seen jsx?

danabramov• 12 years ago

Oh, I love JSX.

jed_watson2• 12 years ago

Have you heard Pete Hunt's angle on "Separation of Concerns" vs. "Separation of Technologies"?

imo JSX doesn't fall into this trap, it just looks like it should.

His JSConf EU talk is worth a watch if you're interested: http://2013.jsconf.eu/speakers/pete-hunt-react-rethinking-be... (slides: http://www.slideshare.net/floydophone/react-preso-v2)

cerrelio• 12 years ago

I don't see why "replace PHP" is needed in the title other than linkbait. This is just a CGI dealy for Node. Even the article says "It can run along side PHP."

nailer• 12 years ago

Agreed, headline is for marketing purposes, but it means that folk stuck with an environment where they'd otherwise be forced to use PHP have a choice not to use it.

CmonDev• 12 years ago

Which marketing purposes, first thought that comes to mind is "from bad to even worse"?

o_____________o6• 12 years ago

Because a large section of the php ecosystem is cgi and inline HTML. That was part of the original appeal and the reason it endures on budget hosts.

hayksaakian2• 12 years ago

What's considered a budget host in 2015 when I can get a digital ocean server to do with as I please for 60$ / year

dang• 12 years ago

We replaced that with "CGI" in the title.

mikegioia• 12 years ago

This is a pretty cool project. Does anyone know if a copy of the node binary is made for each request? My concern is that if it's ~10MB on every request that could become problematic.

It looks from the code that it runs your JS through it's own virtual machine, though. I can't imagine funnelling Javascript through Javascript through Node being worth while.

carsongross• 12 years ago

Now you have function(amount){

console.log(amount + " problems.");

}

eatonphil• 12 years ago

This might be a really bad question that is just as applicable to Node.js in general, but doesn't this get confusing distinguishing between the server-side and client-side aspects?

geon• 12 years ago

Not really. Compared to using separate languages on the server and client, I feel that using the same language makes it a bit easier because I don't need to switch "mode" when jumping back and forth in the code. Like, when working on iOS apps, I sometimes write `self` instead of `this`.

I have sometime seen the argument for Node of using the same code on client and backend simultaneously, but in practice I haven't found any use for that. The only big thing I can think of is form/model validation, but if you do ajax, you can just as well do all that on the server anyway.

TheAceOfHearts• 12 years ago

Isomorphic apps. I've been playing around with React+Flux, and it's perfect. You can write your API in any language you want (even keeping it as part of node if you wish!), but the client is React. This means you can re-use almost exactly the same code for the frontend and backend. You get server-side rendering that delegates to the client once it has loaded.

I recently re-wrote my blog (https://blog.cesarandreu.com/) to take this approach. Repo: https://github.com/cesarandreu/trois-blog

The client bootstrap code that's used on the server is in client/middleware.js. Aside from that it reuses the exact same code.

rgbrenner• 12 years ago

I could see that with node-cgi if you're mixing html+server side+client side in a single file.. that would be confusing.

In practice though (and if you're using the nodejs), you would have better organization... for ex, all of your nodejs code for in a directory, and then a directory with your templates (which is also where the inline client side js would go). Making it much easier to think about them separately.

greggman• 12 years ago

This doesn't seem to replace PHP whatsoever.

I thought PHP didn't run as CGI, shelling to a separate program with every request. It runs, in nearly all installations, as a plugin, saving the overhead of spawning a new program.

That's just one of the many reasons it did so well back it the day because it allowed a server to handle far more requests than CGI based stuff.

Xorlev• 12 years ago

PHP can run as CGI, original Apache deployments ended up being that way. Then everyone switched to mod_php/fcgi deployments.

avita1• 12 years ago

Is there a real use-case for this? IIS has run server-side JS for years, and nobody's really using it.

pjmlp2• 12 years ago

Some developers seem to be unwilling to learn anything else other than JavaScript.

fsniper2• 12 years ago

Atwood's Law: any application that can be written in JavaScript, will eventually be written in JavaScript.

WorldWideWayne• 12 years ago

That's right, because it lacked Node's expansive set of robust modules. Now you can use iisnode [1] which allows IIS to host Node apps while also acting as the static file server and optionally also serving up ASP.NET/MVC/WebAPI requests.

In the past I wouldn't have considered running Javascript on IIS but with iisnode, it opens up a whole new world of possibilities that can be mixed into the .NET world.

[1] https://github.com/tjanczuk/iisnode

dpweb• 12 years ago

Did a Node module a while back to include PHP scripts in a node environment. https://github.com/digplan/php-node

fsniper2• 12 years ago

Strange, 22 year old technology is resurrected for javascript? cgi is an expensive technology because it execs full application on every request. It would be a bit more sane if it was implemented with fast-cgi.

Sometimes, I wish people did not hack for the sake of hacking.

rifung2• 12 years ago

I was under the impression Node.js could already be used to run back end code? Could someone explain to me (who is new to the industry) the difference between what this does and what Node.js already did?

0x62• 12 years ago

This is designed to run without shell access, and without installing Node.js. Users on shared hosting cannot normally install Node.js, so are restricted to the usual LAMP stack, however this allows users to bypass this and process everything with Node.js.

hayksaakian2• 12 years ago

how would you install node modules though?

aikah2• 12 years ago

This is designed to run without shell access, and without installing Node.js.

How can you run that without installing node itself? the godaddy tutorial specifically says one needs to upload nodejs on the server.Whether you are running apt-get install node or uploading it,you are still installing node on the server

rifung2• 12 years ago

Thanks for the clear explanation!

pdappollonio• 12 years ago

It allows you to run NodeJS code in a shared server, the ones you buy when you're developing PHP apps, which are cheap and easily findable. Normally, you need a VPS, a dedicated or a cloud to host your NodeJS apps.

thomasfoster96• 12 years ago

PHP in JavaScript? Node.js itself is much more versatile and often easier than PHP (in my experience anyway), so I can only assume this is so Node.js can be used as a drop in replacement.

I think the only thing missing would be automaticly including PHP.js

gasping7• 12 years ago

This is why Node.js is receiving an enormous backlash from the programming community. People keep peddling it as a solution to all problems when in reality it has very limited utility in all but a few use cases. Pushing this thing over old CGI technology and adding a hideous spaghetti-code HTML interleaving syntax is akin to shoving it further down the throats of the masses who don't want or need Node.js. The best thing to do is leave Node.js in its corner of the ecosystem and let people find it if they need it. Why are we even talking about CGI? It's 2015. This does nothing good for the developer ecosystem.

I've got a running theory for the next 10 or so years of development. Node.js's sole purpose was to lower the barrier to entry of server-side development. With the barrier to entry lowered, inexperienced developers with no knowledge of proper tooling are beginning to reinvent the wheel and make the same mistakes we did 10 or fifteen years ago. We're going to see a tragic repeat of the worst decisions made over the past few decades only this time they'll be running on what is arguably one of the most poorly designed programming languages, Javascript. Those who are too inexperienced to understand history are doomed to repeat it.

jenscow2• 12 years ago

While I am on your side of the fence, there are a lot of those whose sole language is Javascript (learned from client-side) and have no time/motivation/ability to learn a new language. For them, wouldn't it be cool if they could use their existing knowledge and develop on the server?

I'm not saying it's a good or bad thing, I'm just saying that's how it is.

gasping7• 12 years ago

I don't think so. I'm all for lowering barriers to entry but there is a point where it becomes harmful to the ecosystem and to the developers themselves. Software development is, in my opinion, an engineering discipline, and so it's hugely important to use the right equipment for a specific task. If somebody truly can't learn how to do server-side development properly then they need to pass the job onto someone who can. Software development is hard. Not everyone can do it. This isn't a bad thing. Understanding that software development is hard allows us to move forward and gain a more broad knowledge of our field. Ignore that, and we end up repeating history. See: the templating syntax in node-cgi. There is no reason for that to exist in 2015. This is not how we advance a STEM field.

ddebernardy• 12 years ago

I think we have a nomination for the best troll of the year already. :-)

LunaSea3• 12 years ago

Node.js is great for REST API development but hey who's using those these days right ?

But I agree that this project fixes a non-existing problem.

gasping7• 12 years ago

I agree that Node.js is pretty good for thin REST APIs, it's one of the few scenarios that Node.js actually works quite well. It's the other 99% of use cases that I take issue with.

emilsedgh• 12 years ago

Node.js's sole purpose was to lower the barrier to entry of server-side development.

async nature of nodejs, prototype based OO, callback hells and scope chain make JS harder than Ruby and Python, IMHO.

I dont think nodejs lowers the barrier. Or am I mistaken?

gasping7• 12 years ago

You're quite right. Node.js is more like a trap for inexperienced developers who probably won't even understand why Node.js is an awful tool when used to solve the wrong problem because they have no real experience (I believe Node.js is the wrong answer to the wrong problem in all but a very few exceptional circumstances).

moron4hire2• 12 years ago

I don't understand what you mean by "shoving it further down the throats of the masses". Are people being ordered to use Node.JS against their will somewhere?

gasping7• 12 years ago

Yes, usually by their manager. Things like Node.js get over-marketed to the public, managers are fooled into thinking it's a valid solution to their problem, then they force developers to use it against their will. node-cgi increases the number of scenarios where Node.js can be inappropriately forced down the throats of otherwise competent developers.

And there's also the long tail of inexperienced developers who made their own decision to use it and left a broken application that an experienced developer is called in to fix.

I also prefixed my statement with "akin to", which is to say it's not literally being shoved down the throats of developers but the effect is similar.

Animats2• 12 years ago

This looks useful. HostGator will host a web site for $3.96 a month. You can't have any long-running processes. You're limited to CGI, PHP, and static pages. For low-traffic web sites that need some modest amount of host-side processing, that's an effective solution. There's nothing wrong with running a Javascript engine instead of the usual Perl or Python engines under CGI.

If your e-commerce site does one sale a minute, you don't need Docker containers running on AWS instances behind a content delivery network.

jed_watson2• 12 years ago

I'm not familiar with the benefits of HostGator but how is this better than spinning up a free Heroku dyno to serve your node.js app?

That's also a very effective solution for low-traffic sites with a modest amount of host-side processing and more than enough for one sale a minute.

It's got great options for 3rd-party service integration too (e.g. free MongoDB hosting for < 512mb with MongoLab), and a very node.js friendly environment / deployment workflow.

Not trolling, genuinely curious what the benefit of this would be as an alternative.

aikah2• 12 years ago

Free dynos shutdown every hour when it's not active.Starting up can take next to 10 seconds.Furthermore it's a free service,I don't think people should abuse their generous offer meant for testing purpose. There is no guarantee they will continue offering free dynos forever.

Some people got burned recently hosting mongodb servers on a popular Saas that used to provide free mongodb hosting.Now that Saas is paid only,and though they aren't deleting existing test dbs,they could choose to do it at anytime.

One shouldn't consider free offers fit for any production purpose.

Like you wouldn't use free domains for a production app would you ?

Animats2• 12 years ago

How is this better than spinning up a free Heroku dyno to serve your node.js app?

Heroku's free service is more limited than it was in 2012. Current policy: "Heroku comes with 750 free dyno hours for development use. Beyond that you must pay for what you use."

sysk• 12 years ago

It's crazy how some people in this thread get so emotional and negative about a new tool. If you don't like it, just don't use it. Yes, we know that CGI is slow and that you don't like Javascript.

friendzis• 12 years ago

AddHandler bugs again?

evo_9• 12 years ago

I much prefer meteors approach to all this.

homulilly• 12 years ago

Using '<?' for embedded code is generally a bad idea since it conflicts with xml. PHP has had it disabled by default and not recommended for years.

deniska• 12 years ago

I still prefer PyHP: http://www.ccraig.org/software/pyhp/manual/sample.html

CGI Using Node.js

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