Mern Stack

MERN Stack Course

MERN Stack Training Materials

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Overview ⌘

• What is MERN stack?
• MERN stack included technologies
• How is it better/worse than the good old LAMP Stack?

MERN acronym ⌘

• MongoDB - MongoDB
• Express.js - Express
• React - React
• Node.js - Node
• In Danish it means - "more" (-;

What do we have on board? ⌘

• The Mern Stack is
  • a fullstack javascript framework built with MongoDB, Express.js, React.js, Node.js
  • a solution that helps you build fast, robust, and maintainable production web applications

Why do we need it? ⌘

• Flexibility, simplicity, and performance
• When the simplicity and common structure make our life easier
• A clean, coherent mechanism for moving data from user to disk farm and back again
  • MongoDB offers a more flexible, accommodating layer for storing data
  • Node.js provides a better nexus for running our server
  • Express helps standardize how we build our websites
  • React provides a clean way of adding interactive functions and AJAX-driven rich components

The reasons in more depth ⌘

• Cloud orientated MongoDB
• The server layer simplified with Node.js
• Isomorphic code
• JSON everywhere
• Superfast is Node.js, indeed
• React is simple

Cloud orientated MongoDB ⌘

• MERN stack offers a compelling database layer in MongoDB, if our web app plans include embedding it in the cloud
• Modern database equipped with: automatic sharding, full cluster support, failover support and automatic replication
• MongoDB's document structure is far more flexible (projects in flux and dealing with data which is tricky to constrain in table form)
  • To compare, MySQL’s structure is confining (tables and their normalization requirements, etc)
• Cheap disk space (multiple terabytes rather then megabytes)
  • Relational DBs have JOINs to save disk space, but they can be tricky and hard on RAM
  • Some database designers end up de-normalizing their data because the JOINs are too slow

The server layer simplified with Node.js ⌘

• Navigating the various layers of the LAMP stack can be difficult - shuffling through various config files with differing syntax
• Node.js put this kind of pipework all in one place, all in one language, all in one pile of logic
  • Changes how our app routes requests, with small js code and the rest is handled by Node.js
  • Changes the logic used to answer queries
  • Rewrites URLs or constructs an odd mapping
  • Less different documentations references
  • No more different config files for everything
• Having everything in one layer means
  • less confusion and less chance of strange bugs created by weird interactions between multiple layers

Isomorphic code ⌘

Isomorphic code con't ⌘

• By going MERN, we can enjoy that same JavaScript on the client and the server
  • Leave behind the LAMP stack’s client/server schizophrenia
• If we write code for Node and decide it’s better placed in React
  • We can move it over with ease
  • And we run it the same way
• Programming MERN-based apps is significantly easier
• Staffing up a project
  • No need to look for a PHP expert and a JavaScript expert
  • Or a front-end and a back-end specialist
  • Instead, it’s all JavaScript across the stack

JSON everywhere ⌘

JSON everywhere con't ⌘

• React and MongoDB both speak JSON, as do Node.js and Express
• The data flows neatly among all the layers without rewriting or reformatting
• MERN uses the same JSON format for data everywhere
  • Which makes it simpler and saves time reformatting as it passes through each layer
• JSON’s ubiquity through the MERN stack makes working with external APIs that much easier
  • GET, manipulate, present, POST, and store all with one format
• MySQL’s native format for answering queries is not reusable
• PHP already has the code to import MySQL data and make it easy to process
  • But that doesn’t help the client layer
• Of course there are so many well-tested PHP libraries that convert the data easily
  • But it all seems a bit inefficient and confusing

Superfast is Node.js, indeed ⌘

Superfast is Node.js, indeed con't ⌘

• These days Node.js is often flat out faster than Apache
  • A number of benchmarks show that Node.js offers better performance, while doing much more
  • Node.js event-driven architecture is quicker
  • Shaving even milliseconds off our app’s performance is important and Node.js can do that
  • While offering a Turing-complete mechanism for reprogramming it
• Dominant platforms like WordPress or Drupal have great libraries of php code
• Node.js has NPM, package manager, which makes it even easier to share code
  • The public repositories targeting Node.js are growing quickly

React is simple ⌘

React is simple con't ⌘

• LAMP doesn’t include an analog to R in MERN
  • If we want to do anything on the client side, we’re on our own
  • There are plenty of good PHP-based frameworks that work with MySQL: WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, etc
    • Each is a bit different and moving in its own direction
    • They offer differing strategies, and it’s hard to switch between them, let alone port code from one to the other
• Anointing one client framework adds consistency and stability

React is modern con't 2 ⌘

• React was built by folks with 20 years of experience building web apps
  • They knew well enough to leave the design work to HTML and CSS
  • They also figured out how to add a bit of JavaScript to scan the HTML
  • They looked at what humans do well, then tailored the JavaScript to support the humans
  • The components system and the logic layers are dramatically cleaner than what we’ve seen before
    • They figured out simpler ways to leverage the local power of JavaScript to guess what we are doing (UI)

Not only alternatives ⌘

• Google's Angular - Angular
• Emberjs - Ember (wanna see the real-life example?)
• Vuejs - Vue
• " **** " - take a noun, add ".js" and probably it will be existing library already there (-;

MERN quick-starters, frameworks ⌘

• Nextjs
  • Next.js stack
• React Bootstrap - css and js together
  • Bootstrap
• Grommet - mobile first
  • Grommet
• Gatsby - seo first
  • Gatsby

Our Course Plan ⌘

In overall

1. DAY1 MERN intro, JS, JSON, CommonJS, git
   • js_mats
   • Git presu
2. DAY2 Node and Express
   • Node.js and Express.js materials
3. DAY3 Mongodb and mongoose
   • MongoDB part
4. DAY4 React, Jest
   • React Basics
5. DAY5 MERN implementation, RESTapi
   • Rest part
   • All parts in one stack (=

Our Course Plan in more details per day ⌘

Day 1: Introduction to MERN Stack and JavaScript (09:00 - 16:00)
09:00 - 10:30: Introduction to MERN Stack, understanding Fullstack Development, benefits, and use cases
10:30 - 11:00: Coffee Break
11:00 - 13:00: Introduction to JavaScript and ES6+ features essential for MERN stack
13:00 - 14:00: Lunch Break
14:00 - 16:00: JSON, CommonJS, git

Day 2: Node.js, Express.js, and Authentication (09:00 - 16:00)
09:00 - 11:00: Introduction to Node.js and asynchronous programming
11:00 - 11:30: Coffee Break
11:30 - 13:00: Building a simple server with Express.js
13:00 - 14:00: Lunch Break
14:00 - 15:30: Express middleware, routing, and handling requests and responses; integrating authentication
15:30 - 16:00: Q&A and Debrief

Day 3: MongoDB, Mongoose, and Authorization (09:00 - 16:00)
09:00 - 11:00: Introduction to MongoDB, NoSQL databases, and CRUD operations
11:00 - 11:30: Coffee Break
11:30 - 13:00: Using Mongoose for object data modeling, validating data, and making queries
13:00 - 14:00: Lunch Break
14:00 - 15:30: Integrating MongoDB with Express.js application, implementing authorization
15:30 - 16:00: Q&A and Debrief

Day 4: React.js Basics, Integration, and Authentication (09:00 - 16:00)
09:00 - 11:00: Introduction to React.js, understanding components, props, and state
11:00 - 11:30: Coffee Break
11:30 - 13:00: React Hooks and Context API
13:00 - 14:00: Lunch Break
14:00 - 15:30: Integrating React.js with the Express.js backend; integrating authentication
15:30 - 16:00: Q&A and Debrief

Day 5: Building and Securing a Fullstack Application (09:00 - 16:00)
09:00 - 11:00: Planning and starting a fullstack application
11:00 - 11:30: Coffee Break
11:30 - 13:00: Building the backend with Express.js and MongoDB; integrating with the frontend
13:00 - 14:00: Lunch Break
14:00 - 15:30: Building the frontend with React.js; integrating with backend and MongoDB; ensuring application security
15:30 - 16:00: Final Q&A, Debrief, and Closing