Deploying Node.js Microservices
The term microservices is used to describe applications that have been built based on the microservice architecture paradigm. This architecture encourages larger applications to be built as a set of smaller modular applications, where each application focuses on one key concern. Microservice architectures are a contrast to the monolithic architectures of the past. Monolith is a term given to an application that handles many disparate concerns.
There are numerous benefits to adopting a microservice architecture. Ensuring that an application only serves one purpose means that the application can be optimized to best serve that purpose. Microservices help to decouple various parts of a system, which can result in easier debuggability if something goes wrong. Adopting a microservice architecture also enables you to scale different parts of the system independently.
There are not only technical benefits to adopting a microservice architecture. Separating microservices into separate code bases can enable smaller teams to have autonomy over the microservices they’re responsible for. Many microservice-based systems are written in a variety of frameworks and languages. Development teams can choose the language and framework they feel is best suited for their microservice.
Microservices can, however, increase complexity due to the management of multiple services, which requires mature DevOps practices and comprehensive monitoring. For this reason, microservices are often not suitable for simple applications where the management overhead outweighs the benefits.
Node.js microservices commonly expose RESTful APIs. Representational State Transfer (REST) is very popular. A RESTful API exposes its API via HTTP, making appropriate use of the HTTP verbs. For example, if a blogging service exposed a RESTful API, you’d expect it to expose an endpoint to which you could send an HTTP GET request to retrieve a blog post. Similarly, it would likely expose an endpoint to which you could send an HTTP POST request, with data, to publish new blogs.
Microservices and container technologies go hand in hand. Cloud and container technologies are growing in adoption, with Docker and Kubernetes, which are the leading choices for deploying microservice-based applications.
This chapter contains the following recipes:
- Generating a microservice with LoopBack
- Consuming a microservice
- Building a Docker container
- Publishing a Docker image
- Deploying to Kubernetes
