How to create C/C++ Addons of Node.js

We can create Node.js Addons written in C/C++.

See the following page for more detail.

Addons | Node.js v6.7.0 Documentation

In this post, I’ll introduce how to create factorial method addon. Finally, we can use the method like this.

console.log(addon.factorial(5)) // 120

Step 1

First, Set up npm project.

$ npm init

Step 2

Install following packages.

$ npm install -g node-gyp
$ npm install --save nan
$ npm install bindings # optional

node-gyp is a native addon build tool for Node.js. Node.js addons depend on V8 JavaScript Engine, so when V8 is updated, you may also need to update your addon.

nan module removes addon dependency on V8, we don’t need to consider backward compatibility.

bindings is helper module for loading your native module’s .node file.

Step 3

Create a binding.gyp file with the following content. This is needed for build C/C++ program, and NAN needs include_dirs.

{
  "targets": [
    {
      "target_name": "factorial",
      "sources": ["factorial.cc"],
      "include_dirs": ["<!(node -e \"require('nan')\")"]
    }
  ]
}

Step 4

Create factorial.cc like this.

#include <nan.h>

using namespace v8;

int factorial(int n);

NAN_METHOD(Factorial) {
  if (!info[0]->IsNumber() || info[0]->NumberValue() < 1) {
    Nan::ThrowTypeError("Wrong argument");
    return;
  }

  info.GetReturnValue().Set(factorial(info[0]->NumberValue()));
}

NAN_MODULE_INIT(init) {
  Nan::SetMethod(target, "factorial", Factorial);
}

NODE_MODULE(factorial, init)

int factorial(int n) {
  if (n == 1) {
    return 1;
  } else {
    return factorial(n - 1) * n;
  }
}

There are 3 important modules.

NAN_METHOD is an implementation of method.

NAN_MODULE_INIT registers the method.

NODE_MODULE is entry point for this addon, the first argument must be same as target_name in binding.gyp.

Step 5

Build the code by the following command.

$ node-gyp configure build

Then factorial.node is created in build/Release directory.

Step 6

Write some JavaScript code.

const addon = require("bindings")("factorial.node")
// const addon = require('./build/Release/addon'); // no bindings module

console.log(addon.factorial(10)) // 3628800

I put the above code on GitHub repository: Node.js Addon Sample

Thanks for reading, following steps are written in here.

nodejs/node-addon-examples: Node.js C++ addon examples from http://nodejs.org/docs/latest/api/addons.html