Google Inc. today announced support for Node.js on its App Engine cloud-based web framework for building software applications hosted on Google infrastructure.

Node.js is an open-source, cross-platform JavaScript runtime environment for executing JavaScript code server-side that’s becoming increasingly popular for running data applications at scale.

Google said that starting today, developers can now deploy applications built using Node.js to the App Engine standard environment, bringing about a number of benefits. These include faster deployment and automatic scaling of applications.

“Node.js apps will scale instantaneously depending on web traffic; App Engine automatically scales to zero when there are no incoming requests and quickly scales up the number of instances when traffic increases,” Google product manager Steren Giannini wrote in a blog post.

Other benefits include what Google calls an “idiomatic developer experience,” with no restrictions on the programming languages or application programming interfaces developers want to use. Google also said Node.js apps on App Engine will benefit from much stronger security, because the platform enables single-click security certificate generation.

“You can serve your application under a secure HTTPS URL with your own custom domain,” Giannini said. “In addition, we take care of security updates so that you don’t have to, automatically updating the operating system and Node.js minor and patch versions.”

Google also said it has made many of its cloud applications available to use via Node.js apps via a series of client libraries.

Giannini said developers can begin running their Node.js apps on Google App Engine starting today, and can try it out for free using the most basic version of the platform.

Image: Node.js