Best webserver + language for new web-app

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Just starting a new project - the key component is to present an API that will return JSON data from a noSQL database. It has to be fast and simple.

My first thought was to use Google App Engine with Python and their datastore. However, I’m not really comfortable with having the data stored within Google. That’s a PAAS, so implies quite a bit of locking in.

Next thought is to use Rackspace with ObjectRocket - the latter being a noSQL database. This would mean me using a Linux virtual machine, so need to decide on the webserver and language to use there. I’ve used Python, PHP, and client-side JavaScript before.

Answering my own question, I think I’ll use bog standard Apache + PHP to get started, as there’s probably better documentation etc for using ObjectRocket with it. Then I can get a feel for the latency involved, and whether worth converting to another webserver and/or language.

Node.js is intriging, but wonder if stable and secure enough, and how easy to get started with?

Any other options worth investiging? Remember, it’s really just a call to the webserver, pulling data from the noSQL db, a little bit of checking, and returning the data asap.

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I’d say it’s stable enough (although that depends on your requirements for stability).

How easy it is to get started? strongly depends on your current JS knowledge. you should be comfortable with closures, callbacks and promises (the latter is extensively used when you choose mongoose as MongoDB (a common NoSQL DB with Node) driver)

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Node.js is intriging, but wonder if stable and secure enough, and how easy to get started with?

Stable and Secure enough for these guys.

Any other options worth investiging?

Have you looked at Heroku or AWS? Using PaaS doesn’t really require locking in. I use Heroku and I can run my app anywhere. I had to make some changes to make it compatible, like removing SASS on build because JRuby wasn’t compatible and building an image upload server, but other than that it’s pretty much the same as I would put it anywhere else.

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Thanks, looks like node.js + ObjectRocket it is! The front end will use angular.js, so similarlities there

  • promises, promises :wink: