One of the reasons nodejs applications slow is lacking accountability when it comes to managing memory. We normally defer that memory management tasks the garbage collection. That is an answer to a couple of issues, that turned out to also to be a problem.

This blog takes a different approach, and only states facts about key memory hogs operations, and provides quick fixes, whenever there is, without going into too many details — or references.

In this article we will talk about:

• Identifying memory leak issues.
• Tracing nodejs application memory issues
• Cleaning nodejs long-lasting objects
• Production grade memory leak detection tools

Even though this blog post was designed to offer complementary materials to those who bought my Testing nodejs Applications book, the content can help any software developer to tuneup working environment. You use this link to buy the book.

Memory Leak

Managing memory can be a daunting task in nodejs environment. Some strategies to detect and correct memory leaks can be found in the following articles.

This article is unfinished business and will be adding more content as I experience memory leak problems, or find some interesting use cases off Github and StackOverflow.

• Hunting a Ghost – Finding a Memory Leak in nodejs ~ RisingStack Blog
• Simple Guide to Finding a JavaScript Memory Leak in nodejs ~ Alex Kras Blog
• Tracking down Memory leaks in nodejs – A nodejs Holiday Season ~ Mozilla Hacks
• Export this: Interface Design Patterns for nodejs Modules ~ GoodEggs
• Node runs out of memory running our builds
• nodejs Performance Tip of the Week: Managing Garbage Collection ~ StrongLoop Blog
• Memory management reference
• Understanding Garbage Collection and hunting Memory Leaks in nodejs ~ Dynatrace Blog
• Expose gc not working, a GitHub issue
• Expose gc in Chrome-based testing environments ~ StackOverflow query
• Using process.memoryUsage() to track heap use in nodejs apps ~ nodejs documentation
• How to monitor Monitor memory usage for nodejs ~ StackOverflow Query 56,418 Views so far

Conclusion

In this article, we focused on identifying potential sources of memory leaks in nodejs applications and provided early detection mechanisms so that the same problem cannot happen again. There are additional complimentary materials on memory management in the “Testing nodejs Applications book” book.

#snippets #performance #nodejs #memory-leak