Over time, some development stacks have become go-to choices for devs and teams.
And one of these high-ranked options is no other than the combination of MongoDB, Express.js, React, and Node.
But what is the MERN Stack? How does each of its techs work to create complete products?
We'll delve into this great stack so you can see it for yourself!
What is the MERN Stack?
MERN Stack is a combination of four technologies: MongoDB, Express, React and Node.
By working together, these create a full-stack JavaScript development environment and end-to-end JavaScript applications.
This advantage narrows down the complexity of big-sized products despise project requirements.
The MERN stack receives praise for its simplicity, as it allows developers to use a single programming language.
It has gained popularity for building modern, real-time web applications.
Since it leads to faster application development, it's broadly used in the software development industry.
MERN Stack Elements
MongoDB on MERN
MongoDB is a popular open-source, document-oriented NoSQL (non-relational) Database Management System.
Within the MERN Stack, Mongo is essential to store data, such as content, user profiles, or uploads.
It stores data in flexible documents depending on the project requirements, allowing for dynamic schemas and easy application integration.
This document database has wide uses in several applications, from Content Management Systems to eCommerce platforms.
It's also helpful in Progressive-Web and Single-Page Applications.
In short, it's an amazing tool for any project that needs flexible and scalable data storage!
Further, it works great with the other techs in this stack! Mongo supports scalability and agility and has speedy query language performance.
MongoDB Features
- Document-Oriented. MongoDB stores data in flexible documents. Each document can have its structure and fields can vary between documents. Likewise, MongoDB can scale horizontally across multiple servers, allowing for increased performance as data grows.
- Performance and Availability. MongoDB is optimized for performance and can handle a high volume of read and write operations. It also supports replica sets to ensure high availability in case of node failures.
- Programming Languages. MongoDB provides official drivers for various programming languages. As a result, is eases interacting with the database from different application environments!
Express.js on MERN
Express.js is a popular server-side web application framework for Node.js.
The minimalistic and unopinionated framework provides flexible features for building web applications and APIs.
Further, it's asynchronous, single-threaded, efficient, fast, and scalable.
ExpressJS provides server-side logic for apps, applying to single-page, multipage, and hybrid web apps.
The framework gets used widely in the Node.js community for developing web applications, RESTful APIs, and single-page applications.
Its simplicity, flexibility, and extensive ecosystem make it popular for building server-side applications with Node.js.
Express.js Features
- Routing. Express.js allows to define routes to handle different HTTP methods and URLs to map URLs to specific functions or handle processing requests.
- Middleware. Middleware functions in Express.js can be executed sequentially in the request-response cycle for parsing request bodies, handling authentication, logging or error handling. It also has a rich ecosystem of middleware libraries that can be easily integrated into applications.
- Template Engines. Express.js supports template engines to dynamically generating HTML pages by embedding data within templates. This simplifies serving static assets to clients directly from a directory, such as CSS stylesheets and JavaScript files.
React on MERN
Although many think of React js as a framework, it's a front-end JavaScript library.
Most known as React, this open-source library focuses on building interactive User Interfaces (UIs).
React allows developers to create reusable UI components that efficiently update and render when data changes.
Its main features include being declarative, simple, server-side supporting, and component-based.
Since its launch, it's been a top-rated tool for development companies of all sizes.
React is often used with other frameworks or libraries like Redux to build feature-rich and scalable web applications.
It has gained great popularity due to its efficient rendering, components reusability, and large supporting ecosystem.
React Features
- Component-based. React breaks the UI into reusable components with compressed logic and state to build and maintain complex interfaces. Components can be nested within each other in hierarchical structures. When states change, React's state management automatically re-renders components and updates UIs.
- Virtual DOM. React utilizes a virtual representation of the Document Object Model (DOM). This lightweight copy of the actual DOM allows for efficient updates and component rendering. React compares the virtual DOM with the real DOM and only updates the necessary parts when changes occur.
- Data Flows. React follows a unidirectional data flow pattern, also known as one-way binding. Data flows from parent to child components through props, ensuring predictable and easy-to-understand data flows.
Node.js on MERN
Node—or Node.js—is an open-source JavaScript runtime environment for scalable network apps.
Built on the Chrome V8 JavaScript engine, Node is asynchronous and event-driven.
Also, it's cross-platform, single-threaded, fast, and scalable.
Node’s benefits include improved stack developer productivity and satisfaction while cutting development costs.
The Node.js environment allows developers to run JavaScript code outside the browser and on the server.
Moreover, it has an easy learning curve and a large community.
If you want to see an example of Node in action, you can look at our work with Marathon Kids!
Node.js Features
- Asynchronous and Event-Driven. Node.js follows a non-blocking, asynchronous programming model. It uses an event-driven architecture, allowing multiple I/O operations to be processed concurrently without blocking the execution of other tasks.
- Node Package Manager. Node's
npmcomes bundled with Node.js and provides access to a vast ecosystem of reusable open-source libraries and modules. As a result, it allows developers to integrate third-party code into their applications easily. - Cross-Platform. Node.js is cross-platform, supporting Windows, macOS and various Linux distributions. This lets developers write code once and run it on different operating systems without significant modifications to web servers, APIs, real-time applications and more.
How does the MERN Stack work?
The MERN Stack uses a 3-tier architecture comprising Front-End, Back-End, and database.
The Front-End display tier uses React. Its dynamic client-side application components render the User Interface and handling user interactions.
Moreover, Express works as the backend server, handling incoming requests and performing server-side logic, including files and documentation.
With both ends covered, Express communicates with the database to store and retrieve data.
In this stack, MongoDB works as the Database tier, providing a flexible schema and allowing easy integration with the other components.
Wwhile all this happens, Node acts as the runtime environment for the server-side code, allowing the server-side execution of JavaScript.
Let's divide this process into steps to get an easier view of how the MERN Stack techs interact with one another!
Typically, the MERN Stack application tier's flow goes as follows:
- The client (React) sends a request
- The server (Express) routes and processes the request
- Express notifies MongoDB (the warehouse) to fetch or update data
- The server responds to the client with the requested data or operations
- React receives the data and updates the UI for a seamless User Experience!
At all stages, Node acts as an intermediary between the client and server.
It ensures the smooth execution of server-side code, allowing request processing, response generation, and seamless integration.
With Node.js, devs can leverage JS power throughout the process, leading to full-stack technology projects without switching languages.
MERN Stack with React Native
Are you wondering if you can create mobile apps with the MERN Stack? The answer is yes! Yet, you must add React Native.
To give you a bit of context, React Native is an open-source framework built over React, specializing in mobile application development.
Like its parent library, it focuses on code reusability by having functional components.
Likewise, it's great as a client-side JavaScript framework! Both these features lead to a remarkable ability to build.
Moreover, it's cross-platform, meaning you can use it for iOS and Android!
With this React application, you can lean on faster development of smaller applications, which includes native interface creation and easy testing.
Why use the MERN Stack?
What makes the MERN Stack so great? We’ll cover the pros of combining these four techs.
MERN Full JavaScript Stack
The MERN stack allows teams to use a single programming language, JavaScript, for both the front and the back end.
This advantage simplifies development processes and reduces the learning curve.
With the MERN stack, developers can leverage JavaScript throughout the entire application for more efficient development and code reuse.
MERN Rich Ecosystem
React and Node have large and active communities, meaning numerous libraries, frameworks and tools are available to enhance stack developer productivity.
For example, the npm package manager provides access to a vast repository of open-source packages that easily integrates into MERN stack applications.
Further, the MERN Stack itself has an extensive community. Its extensive documentation, tutorials, and resources make it easier to find solutions, troubleshoot and stay updated.
MERN Scalability and Performance
Node.js' non-blocking, event-driven architecture allows managing many connections with low memory overhead.
As a result, its products are highly scalable and well-suited for building high-performance applications.
Also, it enables handling heavy loads and real-time interactions.
Following this path, MongoDB offers data modeling and schema design flexibility.
It easily takes unstructured or rapidly evolving data and enables fast prototyping and iterative development.
Likewise, React's component reusability ensures that specific server-side changes don't affect the building user interface process.
Overall, the MERN stack offers a streamlined, faster development process, efficient UI rendering, scalability, and a large ecosystem of tools and libraries.
It's a robust choice for building modern, real-time, data-driven, and JavaScript-based web applications.
Its broad list of advantages also makes it an ally for Agile Development and its different methodologies!
Conclusion
The MERN Stack is a powerful technology with many advantages for development and business.
Also, given that all four tools work with JavaScript, the learning process is more accessible while offering a full-stack solution.
As a result, devs, teams, and companies can leverage the power of one of the most well-known programming languages to create top-notch, disruptive products.
We hope this article has given you a clear overview of the MERN Stack for your next full-stack development project!
