Full-Stack React Projects: Modern web development using React 16, Node, Express, and MongoDB

Node was developed as a JavaScript runtime environment built on Chrome's V8 JavaScript engine. Node made it possible to start using JavaScript on the server-side to build a variety of tools and applications beyond previous use cases that were limited to within a browser.

Node has an event-driven architecture capable of asynchronous, non-blocking I/O. Its unique non-blocking I/O model eliminates the waiting approach to serving requests. This allows building scalable and lightweight real-time web applications that can efficiently handle many requests.

Node's default package management system, the Node package manager or npm, comes bundled with the Node installation. Npm gives access to hundreds of thousands of reusable Node packages built by developers all over the world and boasts that it is currently the largest ecosystem of open source libraries in the world.

Express is a basic framework for building web applications and APIs with a Node server. It provides a simple layer of fundamental web application features that complements Node.

In any web application developed with Node, Express can be used as a routing and middleware web framework that has minimal functionality of its own—an Express application is essentially a series of middleware function calls.

It is possible to insert almost any compatible middleware of your choice into the request handling chain, in almost any order, making Express very flexible to work with.

MongoDB is a top choice when deciding on a NoSQL database for any application. It is a document-oriented database that stores data in flexible, JSON-like documents. This means fields can vary from document to document and data models can evolve over time in response to changing application requirements.

Applications that place a high priority on availability and scalability benefit from MongoDB's distributed architecture features. It comes with built-in support for high availability, horizontal scaling using sharding, and multi-data center scalability across geographic distributions.

MongoDB has an expressive query language, enabling ad hoc queries, indexing for fast lookups, and real-time aggregation that provides powerful ways to access and analyze data while maintaining performance even when data size grows exponentially.

React is a declarative and component-based JavaScript library for building user interfaces. Its declarative and modular nature makes it easy for developers to create and maintain reusable, interactive, and complex user interfaces.

Large applications that display a lot of changing data can be fast and responsive if built with React, as it takes care of efficiently updating and rendering just the right UI components when specific data changes. React does this efficient rendering with its notable implementation of a virtual DOM, setting React apart from other web UI libraries that handle page updates with expensive manipulations directly in the browser's DOM.

Developing user interfaces using React also forces frontend programmers to write well-reasoned and modular code that is reusable, easier to debug, test, and extend.

Since all four technologies are JavaScript-based, these are inherently optimized for integration. However, how these are actually put together in practice to form the MERN stack can vary based on application requirements and developer preferences, making MERN customizable and extensible to specific needs.

As JavaScript is used throughout, developers don't need to learn and change gears frequently to work with very different technologies. This also enables better communication and understanding across teams working on different parts of the web application.

Consistency across the stack also makes it easy to learn and work with MERN, reducing the overhead of adopting a new stack and the time to develop a working product. Once the working base of a MERN application is set up and a workflow established, it takes less effort to replicate, further develop, and extend any application.

Organizations of all sizes have been adopting the technologies in this stack based on their needs because they can build applications faster, handle highly diverse requirements, and manage applications more efficiently at scale.

Developer communities surrounding the very popular MERN stack technologies are quite diverse and growing on a regular basis. With lots of people continuously using, fixing, updating, and willing to help grow these technologies, the support system will remain strong for the foreseeable future. These technologies will continue to be maintained, and resources are very likely to be available in terms of documentation, add-on libraries, and technical support.

The ease and benefits of using these technologies are already widely recognized. Because of the high-profile companies that continue adoption and adaptation, and the growing number of people contributing to the code bases, providing support, and creating resources, technologies in the MERN stack will continue to be relevant for a long time to come.

To demonstrate the breadth of possibilities with MERN and how you can easily start building a web application with varying features, this book will showcase everyday use web applications alongside complex and rare web experiences:

The preceding screenshot gives a glimpse of the four different MERN applications developed in the rest of this book 

Chapter 1, Unleashing React Applications with MERN and Chapter 2, Preparing the Development Environment set the context for developing web applications in a MERN stack and guide you through setting up your development environment.

Chapter 3, Building a Backend with MongoDB, Express, and Node and Chapter 4, Adding a React Frontend to Complete MERN show how to bring the MERN stack technologies together to form a skeleton web application with minimal and basic features. This skeletal MERN application acts as a base for the four main applications developed in the rest of the book.

In this part, you will become familiar with the core attributes of a MERN stack web application by building out two real-world applications—a simple social media platform in Chapter 5,Starting with a Simple Social Media Application, and an online marketplace in Chapter 6, Exercising New MERN Skills with an Online Marketplace and Chapter 7, Extending the Marketplace for Orders and Payments.

Chapter 8, Building a Media Streaming Application, Chapter 9, Customizing Media Player and Improve SEO, Chapter 10, Developing a Web-Based VR Game, and Chapter 11, Making the VR Game Dynamic using MERN show how this stack can be used to develop applications with more complex and immersive features, such as media streaming and virtual reality using React 360.

Finally Chapter 12, Following Best Practices and Developing MERN Further wraps up the preceding chapters and applications developed by expanding on best practices to follow to make successful MERN applications, suggesting improvements and further developments.

You may choose to use the book out of the prescribed order based on your experience level and preference. A developer who is very new to MERN can follow the path set out in the book. For a more seasoned JS developer, the chapters in the Building MERN from the ground up - a skeleton application section would be a good place to start setting up the base application, then pick any of the four applications to build and extend.