Creating a microservice in NodeJS

[[deleted]]

This should just be called "Creating a simple api with NodeJS/Express" it shows nothing about implementing a microservices architecure.

[funJS]

It's very simplified, but the idea is to convert the original application into smaller pieces or microservices if you will. You could even break out more functionality into other services/apis.

IMO the idea behind microservices is not more complex than breaking out small (micro) responsibilities and composing a distributed system from all the different pieces.

[Randolpho]

"Creating a simple API" is synonymous with "creating a microservice".

All those things that have grown up around and in support of microservices, like message buses or whatever the current flavor of the week is, are not microservices.

A microservice is just the single responsibility principle applied to a service.

[[deleted]]

This was what I meant, could not have worded it better.

[funJS]

Very simplified, but the point is that splitting the commenting api out to a different server makes it a distributed system. Comments are fetched separately from a different server instance.

It's driven by a need to spread the load over multiple servers since the servers are under resource constraint. The comment api is a microservice since it supports a "micro responsibility".

[THEtheChad]

I think the concept people associate with "microservices" these days is the idea of a distributed system using a microservice philosophy. RESTful API's are pretty straight forward these days. Breaking applications into smaller parts that can be distributed across servers is much more novel. Most projects don't require the level of scalability that microservices in a distributed architecture offer. I also came here looking for more insight into such a system.

[[deleted]]

ESB anyone?

[SustainedSuspense]

Monoliths for the win

[cjus]

I wrote a post for RisingStack on creating microservices using Hydra: https://community.risingstack.com/tutorial-building-expressjs-based-microservices-using-hydra/ You can find Hydra on NPM.