
- Software Engineer, Product
- Modern Technology stacks:
- So What is a Tech Stack?
- Frontend tech stack
- Backend tech stack
- How to choose/build a tech stack
- What is a CI/CD Pipeline?
- Software Business Analyst
- Node.js Express Back-end Overview
- Build React App With Java Backend
- Connecting React-Frontend and NodeJS/Express Backend Applications
- React-Frontend, Node.js/Express-Backend, MySQL Architecture
- React Frontend with a NodeJS/Express Backend SQL-Architecture
- React Frontend with a NodeJS/Express Backend
- So What is git ?
- Git vs GitHub
- Big O Notation


Full-Stack React + Node.Js-express + Mongo-DB

Step-by-step Guide
Introduction
Node.js is a popular server-side JavaScript runtime that allows developers to build scalable, high-performance applications. React, on the other hand, is a powerful JavaScript library for building user interfaces. Combining the two allows you to build full-stack web applications that can handle complex logic on the server side while providing a responsive and interactive user interface on the client side.In this tutorial, we'll go through the process of building a full-stack web application with Node.js and React. We'll start by setting up a Node.js server and then build a React frontend that communicates with the server via APIs. We'll use the following technologies to build the application:
- Node.js and Express for building the server-side APIs
- React for building the client-side UI
- MongoDB for storing data
Setting up the Server
First, we need to set up a Node.js server that will serve as the backend for our application. To do this, we'll use the Express framework, which provides a simple and flexible way to build web applications. Heress how to set up the server:Step 1: Install Node.jst
If you haven't already done so, you'll need to install Node.js on your machine. You can download it from the official Node.js website:Step 2: Create a New Node.js Project
Open up a terminal and create a new directory for your project. Navigate to the directory and initialize a new Node.js project by running the following command:npm init -y
Step 3: Install Dependencies
We'll need to install some dependencies to build our server.Run the following command to install them:
npm install express mongoose body-parser cors
express:
A popular Node.js framework for building web applicationsmongoose:
A MongoDB object modelling tool that provides a straight-forward, schema-based solution to model your application databody-parser:
A middleware that parses incoming request bodies in a middleware before your handlers, available under the req.body property.cors:
A middleware that allows a server to explicitly allow some cross-origin requests while rejecting others.Step 4: Set up the Server
Create a new file called server.js in your project directory. In this file, we'll set up a basic server using Express.
Step 5: Connect to MongoDB
Next, we'll connect our server to a MongoDB database using the mongoose library. Replace the app.listen() line at the end of your server.js file with the following:

Building the React Frontend
Now that we have our server set up, we can move on to building the client-side UI using React. Here's how to get started:Step 1: Install Dependencies
We'll need to install some dependencies to build our React frontend. Run the following command to install them:npm install react react-dom react-router-dom axios
React:
The main React libraryReact-dom:
Provides DOM-specific methods that can be used at the top level of a web app to enable React to interact with the DOMReact-router-dom:
Provides client-side routing for React applicationsAxios:
A Promise-based HTTP client for the browser and node.jsStep 2: Set up the React App
Create a new directory called `client` in your project directory. Navigate to the `client` directory and initialize a new React app by running the following command:npx create-react-app .
This will create a new React app in the current directory. Note the `.` at the end of the command, which tells create-react-app to use the current directory instead of creating a new one.
Step 3: Modify the React App
Open up `App.js` in your React app and replace the contents with the following:

Step 4: Add Navigation
To add navigation to our app, we'll create a new component called `Navigation` that renders links to our routes. Create a new file called `Navigation.js` in the `src` directory of your React app and add the following code:
Step 5: Display Navigation
Finally, we'll modify `App.js` to display our `Navigation` component and the content for each route. Replace the contents of `App.js` with the following:

Testing the Full-Stack App
Now that we've built both our server-side and client-side code, it's time to test our full-stack app. Start your Node.js server by running `npm start` in your project directory, then start your React app by running `npm start` in the `client` directory.You should now be able to navigate to `http://localhost:3000` in your web browser and see your app's home page. Clicking on the "About" and "Contact" links should display their respective pages.
Conclusion
In this tutorial, we walked through the process of building a full-stack web application using Node.js and React. We started by setting up a Node.js server that connects to a MongoDB database and provides API routes for our client-side code to consume.We then set up a React app with basic routing and navigation, and tested our full-stack app by running both our server-side and client-side code simultaneously.
This is just the beginning of what you can do with Node.js and React. With these tools, you can build powerful, scalable, and fast web applications that are easy to maintain and update.
There are many other frameworks and libraries - like Bootstrap, React, Vue,Angular, and jQuery - that are built on JavaScript and provide additional functionalities and common use cases, making a developer's life much easier.
Full-Stack Engineer
