I am looking to working on a project using node js addons with C++. I came across two abstract library NAN and N-API that I can use. However I am unable to decide which one I should use. I was not able to find proper comparison between these two libraries.
What are the pros, cons and differences of both? How to choose between them?
So far I have found that NAN has more online tutorials/articles regarding async calls. But N-API is officially supported by Node (and was created after NAN as a better alternative, although not sure.)
You should use the node-addon-API module for new C++ code (or N-API for C code). All supported (non-EOL) versions of Node.js support it, and it makes maintaining and distributing native add-ons much easier: whereas addons using NAN require rebuilding the module for each
NODE_MODULE_VERSION
(major version of Node.js), modules using N-API/Node-Addon-API are forward-compatible:There's a somewhat confusing compatibility matrix here. N-API version 3 is compatible with Node.js v8.11.2+, v9.11.0+ and all later major versions (v10+), for example.
On top of that, node-addon-API fixes a lot of the annoying parts of NAN (like Buffers always being
char*
instead of, sayuint8_t*
).node-addon-API/N-API addons are compatible with the Bun and Deno runtimes as well.
NAN still works of course, and there are more learning resources online, but node-addon-API is the way forward.