The MEAN stack, which stands for MongoDB, Express, AngularJS, and Node.js, is a complete JavaScript-based technology stack used to develop web applications. These technologies work harmoniously together, allowing developers to build an entire web application from the database to the user interface using only JavaScript.
In this tutorial, we’ll build a simple book store app using the MEAN stack. This application will display a list of books and allow us to perform CRUD (Create, Read, Update, Delete) operations on them.
Understanding the MEAN Stack Components
MongoDB
MongoDB is a document-oriented database known for its high performance and easy scalability. It works well with programming languages and reduces the need for JOINS.
Node.js
Node.js is a platform built on Chrome’s JavaScript runtime. It’s used for server-side scripting and allows you to write server scripts in pure JavaScript. Node.js is event-driven and boasts a non-blocking I/O model.
Express
Express is a fast, un-opinionated, minimalist web framework for Node.js. It helps organize your web application into an MVC (Model-View-Controller) architecture. We’ll use Express to build REST APIs.
AngularJS
AngularJS is a JavaScript framework for building modern, dynamic web applications. It’s typically a SPA (Single Page Application) framework and enhances HTML. Its two-way data binding and dependency injection eliminate much of the code you’d otherwise have to write.
Building the Application
We’ll divide this tutorial into four technical blocks to better grasp the concept of each technology involved.
- Setup & Connection of MongoDB: We’ll learn to install MongoDB into our system and set up a connection. We’ll store all the data that will drive our application using MongoDB. Read the full article.
- Build REST APIs with Node.js, Express, and MongoDB: The REST API lets you interact with Parse from anything that can send an HTTP request. We’ll install Node.js, set up our Express application, and build the REST APIs required for our application. These APIs will be consumed by our AngularJS application. Read the full article.
- Build Front-end in AngularJS: We’ll build an app using AngularJS that will perform various operations, such as listing all books with their details, adding new book data, editing existing book data, deleting existing book data, providing pagination for ‘n’ numbers of books, and searching for required books. Read the full article.
By following this tutorial, you’ll learn how to build a web application using the MEAN stack. This is a valuable skill for creating dynamic and interactive web applications.
