8 NodeJS Projects Worth Checking

GitHub is the holy grail of the developer community when it comes to open-source development. As an open-source language itself, Node.js is gradually becoming one of the most used technologies on GitHub. So, we decided to take a look at 8 trending Node.js projects currently on GitHub.

We have omitted the obvious picks, like express, mocha, and ESlint, from this post. Go through the ones we have picked and see if you can find a new open-source project to contribute to or use in one of your projects.

Electron

Electron is used to build cross-platform desktop applications using the technologies you already use for web development, HTML, CSS, and Javascript. With Electron, you can easily make a desktop application that runs on Windows, Linux, and macOS using the same codebase.

Electron uses Node.js and Chromium as its core technologies. Its most significant feature, also the reason for some security concerns, is permitting the application to access the native APIs of the OS without worrying about the OS type.

Most of the popular desktop applications we see today are built using Electron. Visual Studio Code, Atom, Microsoft Teams, and Slack are some of the examples.

Electron is currently maintained by GitHub. It boasts 86k stars on GitHub, being one of the most popular Node projects currently available.

Strapi

Strapi is a headless CMS system and you can access its stored content through APIs. “Headless”, here, means that it’s focused only on storing and delivering content (backend) and not how they are displayed (frontend).

You can easily develop APIs using Strapi’s user-friendly admin panel in a matter of hours. And then you can use a technology of your liking to build the frontend without worrying about the backend of the application.

The set of features Strapi provides include auto-generated documentation, JWT authentication, and an in-built email system. It automatically generates the logic to handle CRUD operations whenever a new content type is created.

Strapi is still in its early stages as a development tool. But if its popularity on GitHub is any sign, developers already love Strapi very much.

Socket.IO

Socket.IO allows realtime, bidirectional, and event-based communication between a Node server and a client.

It mainly uses the websocket technology to maintain bidirectional communication. If the server wants to send a newly received bit of information to the client without waiting for a client request, this is the technology you should use to achieve that.

It supports auto reconnection in case of server failure and detects when the connection between the server and the client is severed. It’s built on top of the engine.io library.

Without this package, Node already has a reputation as a language friendly for realime app development. With its availability, Node has come to the forefront as a technology used for realtime applications.

Involving in this project gives you a good opportunity to understand how websocket protocol works under the hood.

Check out my previous article on how to build a chat app with NodeJS and SocketIO

Cytoscape.js

Cytoscape is a fully functional graph theory library you can use to model and visualize relational data. For example, you can use this package to model social networks.

It supports many use cases of graph theory like directed graphs, undirected graphs, and compound graphs. It also provides a set of features including the ability to build interactive graphs that support panning, zooming, and box selection.

Cytoscape supports data visualization on desktop and mobile browsers. In addition to visualizing data, you can use this package for analyzing relational data on the server-side.

If you are someone interested in data science, this is a perfect project for you to make your contribution.

PDFKit

PDFKit is a library you can use to generate complex, multi-page, and printable PDF documents. It supports an extensive set of features including vector graphics, font embedding, image embedding, annotations, and encryption.

You can use PDFKit on the server-side and on the browser. In the case of browser-side PDF generation, you have to use two additional libraries named Browsify and blob-stream for the package to work properly.

Hygen

Hygen is a simple code generator you can use to generate code blocks without having to write them on your own.

Though there has been discussions about code generators that help you do more work in less time, most of the other code generators out there don’t provide a productivity bump as significant as Hygen.

Hygen has a good contextual understanding and is agnostic to the language used in the program. When you want to generate new code blocks, you can invoke Hygen to take care of the mundane coding tasks.

Compared to other languages, it works really well with Redux, React Native, and Express. This tool is already used by leading products like Airbnb and Wix.

Cube.js

Cube.js is a framework used to build analytical web applications. Mostly, these tools are related to business intelligence or customer-facing analytics.

It was designed to work with Serverless Query Engines like AWS Athena and Google BigQuery. With Cube.js, you can focus on creating large-scale analytics tools without having to worry about infrastructure.

Cube.js is a modular framework. It provides a set of modules, each doing only one thing, to handle transformations and modeling, querying and caching, manage API gateways, and build UIs.

Being a rather new framework, Cube.js is a good place for you to make open-source contributions, especially if you are interested in big data.

Zenbot

Zenbot is a command-line cryptocurrency trading bot. It uses Node.js and MongoDB as its core technologies.

A user can set up Zenbot on their machine according to their requirements. Zenbot uses AI to continually improve its algorithm, which is capable of trading at a very high frequency. It also has in-built support for other cryptocurrency exchange programs like GDAX, Quadriga, and Kraken.

Contributing to Zenbot gives you an opportunity to experiment with cryptocurrency, still a new technology to the world.

Conclusion

If you are a Node developer, you won’t have a hard time discovering exciting open-source projects, like those mentioned in this post, on GitHub.

Most of these projects are well documented and provide clear guidelines for new contributors. You can visit their GitHub pages and go through the source code to identify opportunities to contribute to these projects.

So, why wait? Go out there and continue your open-source experience as a Node developer.

Thanks for reading!

Juan Cruz Martinez

Juan has made it his mission to help aspiring developers unlock their full potential. With over two decades of hands-on programming experience, he understands the challenges and rewards of learning to code. By providing accessible and engaging educational content, Juan has cultivated a community of learners who share their passion for coding. Leveraging his expertise and empathetic teaching approach, Juan has successfully guided countless students on their journey to becoming skilled developers, transforming lives through the power of technology.