It’s clean, it’s lean—it’s the MEAN Stack
With modern tools. it is possible to create a productiongrade, full-stack application using HTML, CSS, and JavaScript alone. Thecombination of Mongo DB, Express, AngularJS, and Node.js has become so popularthat it has earned the title MEAN stack -- the subject of this book.
This book explores the MEAN stack in detail. We will beginby covering Node.js, as it will lay the groundwork for all of our server-sidework. You will learn how to get Node running on your local machine as well asdownload modules using npm. The key aspects of the Node.js programming modelwill also be covered.
From there, we will move on to Mongo DB, where you'll learnhow to interact with Mongo from a Node application. You will also learn how tocreate, retrieve, update, and delete data from a Mongo store.
After you have a solid grasp on Node and Mongo, the bookwill move on to the Express web server. We'll cover the basics of Expressapplications via topics like routes and middleware. Building on previouschapters, we will cover the integration of Node, Mongo, and Express.
Our coverage of the MEAN stack will wrap up with severalchapters on AngularJS. These chapters will cover Angular fundamentals like databinding, directives, controllers, routing, and services. In an effort toexplore competing technologies, a slight introduction to Ember.js will also beprovided.
Full stack JavaScript is not fully encompassed by the MEANstack. There is an entire ecosystem of JavaScript tools to learn about, andthis book will introduce a few of them. We will cover task runners Gulp.js andGrunt.js which are extremely useful for automating mundane, repetitive tasks.We'll also cover JSHint, a linting tool used to improve code quality. Lintingtools analyze source code and report potentials issues - a feature that isespecially useful in non-compiled languages like JavaScript.
