7 Node JS Project

Ideas for
Beginners, to Train
Your Skills
This content was originally published at:
https://www.blog.duomly.com/node-js-project-ideas-for-beginners/

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Intro to Node JS project ideas for beginners

In this article, I’d like to tell you

about 7 Node JS project ideas that will
help you train your skills, build an
impressive portfolio, and get hired.

For some time, I’m publishing the lists

of projects that you can use to practice
the coding skills that you’ve just
learned. I was focusing mostly on
frontend technologies, but today I
decided to jump to the Javascript backend
framework called Node JS.

If you’d like to check the previous

project ideas, here are the links:


- 11 ideas for the HTML and CSS project,

- 9 Javascript project ideas for
beginners,

- 9 React.js project ideas,

- 9 VueJS project ideas for beginners.

If you don’t feel comfortable with NodeJS

and you’d like to practice a little more
with the guidance, feel free to check out
the youtube channel where we are creating
the NodeJS application step by step.

When you start practicing coding and

building your first projects, remember
that it’s very important to create a
repository for each of your projects so
you will be able to learn git and show
the code for your future employers. If
you don’t remember how you can do it,
here is the video about Git and Github.

And as always I have a video version of

this article so, if you prefer to watch
then ready, you can do it here.
Wystąpił błąd.
Node js projects on Youtube lub włącz JavaScript, jeśli jest wyłączony w Twojej
przeglądarce.
So, are you ready to hear about 7 amazing
Node JS project ideas for beginners to
learn?
NodeJS project ideas - additional information
Node JS is a runtime environment that
executes Javascript code out of the
browser, and it’s commonly used to create
backend using this programming language.
Node JS is very often used with some
additional frameworks like Express or
Nest.js.

Besides the Javascript knowledge to work

with NodeJS, you need to understand how
and why databases are used on backend,
and how to build an API, no matter if you
want to build REST or GraphQL.

There are some additional frameworks that

can be used in some cases and make the
development in Node JS much easier and
faster. It would be good if you could pay
special attention to:

Express.js - is one of the most popular

and the most often selected framework.
Express.js is known as fast, flexible,
and minimalistic. It’s suitable for
building web and mobile applications.

Nest.js - is another NodeJS framework

that is great for developing progressive
server-side applications, the code in
Nest.js is written in Typescript.
Sequelize - it’s a generator framework,
that helps us to work with NodeJS and
databases. It supports MySQL, PostgreSQL,
MariaDB, and some more.

Socket.io - it’s a special type of

framework, as it focuses on building
real-time apps like chats.
Besides the frameworks, you’ll also need
a tool to check the endpoints. I’m using
Postman, but there are many others like
Insomnia or HTTPie.

I hope I’ve mentioned everything

important in the Node JS context, so we
can start our project ideas list!
1st Node Project - Books Directory
The most basic project you can create
using Node.js and Express.js or Nest.js
is a simple REST API.

For this purpose, I’d like to suggest you

build a book directory, where you would
need to create endpoints, using the four
most basic methods: GET, POST, PUT and
DELETE.

You’d use GET for getting all books or

getting only one book by id. With the
POST method, you can add a new book to
the list. You’d need the PUT method for
updating the existing book, and it’s
evident that with the DELETE method, you
will remove the book from the list.

For this kind of application, you don’t

have to use the database, and for the
first app, you can start with data
collected as a JSON file.
2nd Node Project - Basic Users System

Another application that you can do for

training is a Basic User System. It’s a
basic project, but it will help you to
practice very useful skills because the
user is a part of almost every
application.

In this example, you will learn:

- how to set up the database and do

migrations,
- how to create a new user by the
registration,
- how to build login endpoint, - how to
authenticate user,
- how to get the user’s data.

In the case of registration and login,

you should generate a JWT token for the
user that will be returned from the API.

Besides that, remember to hash the

password before you save it in the
database.

If you’d like to look at how I was doing

user registration, login, and
authentication in our NodeJS Course.
3rd Node Project - Real-time Chat Application
Another exciting project that you could
do to practice your Node JS skills is a
real-time chat application.

For this purpose, you could try using a

MongoDB, Express.js framework,
and scoket.io for real-time events.

In the beginning, it’s good to create a

simple chat that will connect and
disconnect users, allow them to send and
receive the messages, but in the future,
it can be a great idea to grow the chat
and add video streaming or login form.

If you need some help in starting your

first real-time chat app, take a look at
the SocketIO documentation.
4th Node Project - Collaborative Drawing App

The fourth project idea is a

Collaborative Drawing App. It involves
some frontend coding, but if you know
Javascript, it shouldn’t be a problem.

This application’s main idea is to create

the canvas element where users would be
able t draw.

Let me tell you what’s needed in this

app. You need to start by setting the
Node JS application with Socket.io
installed.

Then you need to add some HTML to prepare

a simple interface with canvas element
for users to draw, and you can style it
any way you’d like. Then you have to
handle the mouse events that will be
drawing.

And the last thing is to create the

server-side code, where you’d use the
Socket.io to check when new users join
and when they start drawing.
5th Node Project - Email Sender

The next idea for the project in Node JS

you can create is an Email Sender App.
During this project, you can learn how to
send emails in Node JS and how to
schedule emails. And that’s really useful
for the future, as many of the
applications need this feature, for
example, when a new user logs in.

For sending emails easily, you could use

the Nodemailer plugin, which is quite
easy and well documented.

In some time, you can add a frontend and

easily create emails with HTML.
6th Node Project - Video Streaming Platform
Project number six can be quite exciting
and a bit more challenging because I’d
like to suggest building a Video
Streaming Platform.

In this project, you have to take care of

dividing the video content for the chunks
to not send all to the frontend at once,
and that’s what should happen in the Node
JS.

Also, you would need to write some HTML5

to create a video player, and some
Javascript on frontend to handle player
buttons.

This project can be really eye-catching

and could help you to get a job.
7th Node Project - Web Scraper

The last project idea for Node JS I’ve

got today is a web scraper. If you’d like
to collect certain data from the
internet, creating your own web scraper
can be a great idea.

For this application, some plugins like

Cheerio or Puppeteer could be useful.

In this kind of application, you’d need

to get interesting information from the
website code, and then save it to the
file or the database.
Conclusion of Node JS Projects
In this article, I suggested 7 Node JS
project ideas, which you can do to
practice your Node JS skills and build a
coding portfolio that you could show to
recruiters or your future employer.

I hope you’ll find his ideas useful and

start working on progressing your Node JS
knowledge.

If you still need some guidance with

building Node JS projects, feel free to
jump to our course, where we are creating
a fin-tech application step by step.

Thank you for reading,


Anna from Duomly

Table of contents:
• Intro to Node JS project ideas for
beginners
• NodeJS project ideas - additional
information
• 1. Books Directory
• 2. Basic Users System
• 3. Real-time Chat Application
• 4. Collaborative Drawing App
• 5. Email Sender
• 6. Video Streaming Platform
• 7. Web Scraper
• Conclusion