MEAN Stack Tutorial

The mean stack tutorial is designed for the developers who want to design the dynamic website and web application using Mean.js. Our tutorial covers all the components of Mean.js, such as MongoDB, Express.js, Node.js, and Angular.js.

The Mean.js can be considered a collection of various technologies for developing a dynamic website and web application. Mean.js is used for developing a web application where MongoDB is used as a database system, Express.js is used as a back-end web framework, node.js is used as a web server, and Angular.js is used as a front-end framework.

What is MEAN?

Each letter in the word MEAN has some specific meaning. Here, 'M' stands for MongoDB, 'E' stands for Express, 'A' stands for Angular, and 'N' stands for Node.js. It is one of the most popular stacks used for developing the full stack application. Let's understand the basic idea behind the mean stack.

As we can observe in the above figure that there is a front-end app, back-end app and database. The front-end app can be developed using either Angular.js or React.js, and back-end can be developed using Node.js, which is further connected to the MongoDB database. The front-end app and back-end app communicate with each other through the RestAPI. The back-end app exposes the RestAPI endpoints, whereas the front-end app consumes the RestAPI endpoints.

Let's look at each component of Mean.js one by one.

Node.js

Node.js is an open-source platform and provides a runtime environment for executing the javascript code. It is mainly used for building the back-end application. Since there are two types of apps, such as web apps and mobile apps, where web apps run on the browser and mobile apps run on mobile devices. Both web app and mobile app are the client apps to which the user interacts. These apps require to communicate with the backend services to store the data, send emails, push notifications. Node.js is an ideal platform to build highly scalable, data-intensive, and real-time applications. It can be used for agile development and highly-scalable services. For example, PayPal is a java and spring-based application using Node.js.

Advantages of Node.js

• The node.js applications are faster than the other framework-based applications and require fewer people to build the app.
• It requires fewer lines of code.
• The Node app has a 35% faster response time than the other apps.
• The major advantage of using node.js is that node.js uses javascript. If you are a front-end developer, then you can easily transit from the front-end to the full stack developer.

Angular.js

Angular.js is a JavaScript framework that is used to develop web applications. This framework is developed by the Google. Now, the question arises that there are many javascript frameworks available in the market. Why do we prefer angular.js over the other frameworks for developing the web application?.

Advantages of Angular.js

• It is a two-way data binding which means that it keeps the model and view in sync. If any changes are made in the model, then automatically view will also be updated accordingly.
• The Angular.js is designed with testing in mind. The components of angular.js application can be tested with both the testing, such as unit testing and end to end testing.
• With the help of Angular.js, it is easy to develop the application in an MVC architecture.

MongoDB

MongoDB is the database used in web development. It is a NoSQL database, and a NoSQL database can be defined as a non-relational and document-oriented database management system. As it is a document-oriented database management system, so it stores the data in the form of documents. The SQL databases use SQL query language to query the database, whereas the MongoDB is a NoSQL database that uses BSON language to query the database. JSON is a text-based format, but it is inefficient in terms of speed and space. In order to make MongoDB efficient in terms of space and speed, BSON was invented. BSON basically stores the JSON format in the binary form that optimizes the space, speed, and complexity.

Since the MongoDB is an unstructured schema and the data is not related to each other then the question arises 'why do we need to use the MongoDB?'. MongoDB is mainly useful for projects which are huge.

Express.js

Express.js is a free and open-source software used as a back-end web application framework. It is commonly used in the popular development stacks like MEAN with a MongoDB database. The Express.js was developed by TJ Holowaychuk.

Advantages of Express.js

• It is simple and lightweight software. It is not heavy to get installed in the machine and make the application running.
• It is easy to customize and configure as we can see it provides the flexibility that we require.
• It is a better choice for creating the API as when the application requires various APIs to communicate with different people then the Express.js is a good option

Advantages of MeanStack

• Simple and fast: MeanStack is simple to use and fast as it allows the programmers to write the code in a single language for both the server and client-side.
• Universal coding is possible in MeanStack: In MeanStack, the code written in one framework can be easily transferred to another framework.
• Highly flexible: Once the development process of an application is completed, it is easier to test the application on the cloud platform.
• Cost-effective: Since the mean stack uses single language, i.e., javascript so a smaller number of developers required to develop the app using mean stack.
• Open source: All the technologies used in the mean stack are open-source and available for free.

Prerequisite

MEAN.js is a framework for designing web applications. The user should have knowledge of web development using HTML, CSS, and JavaScript and should have basic knowledge of all the four technologies which are MongoDB, Express.js, Angular.js, and Node.js.

Audience

This tutorial is helpful for both beginners and professionals who want to build a career in web-development or seamlessly learn the precepts of MEAN.js. There are a lot of topics and concepts available that will help you to learn MEAN.js easily.

Problem

We assure you that you will not find any problem with this MEAN Stack tutorial. But if there is any mistake, please post the problem in the contact form.