Before you use external libraries I highly recommend learning built-in libraries and functionalities. For e.g.: Try building an HTTP server without 'express', using the inbuilt HTTP module. It will give you a rough idea on how everything works.
Since you're new to NodeJS I recommend watching these two:
Some libraries/frameworks that are commonly used by NodeJS devs:
- ExpressJS - Setup an HTTP server
- SocketIO - Real-time web sockets
- fs - File operations, read, write etc
- axios - You should be already aware, for making HTTP calls
- Sequelize/TypeORM - ORM for relational database
- Mongoose - ORM of MongoDB
- Passport - For authentication and authorization (I never used it)
- Jest - Testing library
Advanced:
- FeathersJS - Helps you to quickly build rest APIs
- Loopback - Similar to FeatherJS, built on top of Express (my favourite one)
- Apollo GraphQL - Setup GraphQL server
- Puppeteer - Headless Chrome. Can be used for testing, web scraping, automating anything that you can do in Chrome etc