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I come from a decade of experience with Java EE, SE and Java with Spring. If there's something that was drilled in me by myself and other fellow developers, was how to make use of design patterns, separation of responsibility, separating definition from implementation, interface segregation, etc. Also, we were always worried about testable code (unit testing and integration tests).

When I was learning Java, there wasn't a single book, magazine or website that didn't implemented things with those rules in mind, to the point of boredom. So we always new how things should be done from an architectural point of view when starting new stuff or maintaining code. With time, projects like Spring Boot and JBoss Seams started to give out of the box a basic project layout witch you simply followed to success(or at least you should...).

Now that I delve deep in Node.js, I miss that so much. There seems to be only a handful of people on the web worried about it and trying to teach newcomers how to write good backend code with Node.js.

People teach you how to boot express and put all of your code (database, logging, mailing, error handling and so on) inside an express route.

Of course, when I started learning Java, there was nothing preventing you from using Servlets directly with some JDBC code thrown inside, or even worse, Scriptlet inside JSPs...

I would appreciate so much to know how you for instance implement a service layer, where do you put your business logic? Do you put it in classes or functions that returns other functions? How to write easily testable code by Mocha for instance... Do I really need a controller layer, or can I trust my routes to cover that responsibility?

I'm interested in JavaScript only on the Backend, using Express.js, Socket.io, RabbitMQ, Passport.js, and GraphQL(in the future). Not interested in any rendering engine or template engines, much less JavaScript on the Browser. I'm already very proficient with Sequelizer and Mongoose.

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  • "Do I really need a controller layer, or can I trust my routes to cover that responsibility?" - how did you decide something like that in Java? Shouldn't be any different. Commented Jun 27, 2022 at 11:55
  • @Bergi, with Spring for instance, the Endpoint itself is the Controller, same goes for Struts. With Express.js, you seem able to do with or without a Controller, you can consider the Endpoint as the Controller or you can wrap it in another layer of code. There's no convention. Commented Jun 27, 2022 at 17:00
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    Unfortunately this is off-topic, as it's more of an editorial with a lot of solicitation for opinion. Also, you have lots of assumptions sprinkled in. As Stack Overflow isn't a discussion site, I suggest asking such a question on more appropriate places (quora, twitter, etc) Commented Jun 28, 2022 at 11:25
  • Also, this is a recommendation question, and recommendation questions (along with opinion-solicitation questions) are off-topic here. Commented Jun 28, 2022 at 11:29

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I know the feeling of switching from Java Spring Boot to the Node.js stack. It was confusing for me in the beginning aswell, but with time you find your set of frameworks you like.

I'm probably not qualified enough to answer your entire question, but I can give you some advice of what framework helped me the most after starting with Node.js.

For me, this framework is NestJS. It's a progressive Node.js framework to build scalable server-sided applications, based on Express.js. It supports a lot of different design patterns, but I personally use a pattern consisting of controllers, services, repositories and providers. You can use multiple different databases obviously.

Nest.js stands out for me, because you don't need any 3rd-party tutorial or documentation, because their own documentation is done really well and has basically all the information you'll ever need. It is really expandable with additional dependencies (most of them are in-house developed and have great documentation aswell).

What also has to be mentioned, is that as a Java-dev you will probably miss OOP if you switch to JavaScript. In Nest.js tough you only develop with TypeScript and overall it gives you a feeling very similar to Java Spring Boot.

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Thanks, I'll take a look at NestJS, however I'm still to start a romance with TypeScript. I'd love to, but I must finishing understanding ES2017/Vanilla JS like a pro first, so I can leap the big step.

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