MERN Stack

What is MERN Stack?

MERN Stands for MongoDB Express React Node.

·        MongoDB – document database

·        Express (.js) – Node.js web framework

·        React(.js) – a client-side javascript framework (use to develop frontend)

·        Node (.js) – the premier JavaScript web server

MERN is a variation of the MEAN Stack, Where the Angular.js frontend framework is replaced with React.js. Express.js is a server-side web framework, and Node.js is the popular and powerful JavaScript server platform.

How does the MERN Stack work?

The MERN architecture allows to easily construct a 3-tier architecture (frontend, backend, database) entirely using JavaScript and JSON.

Is MERN a full-stack solution?

Yes, MERN is a full-stack, following the traditional 3-tier architectural pattern, including the front-end display tier (React.js), application tier (Express.js and Node.js), and database tier (MongoDB).

Why choose the MERN stack?

Let’s start with MongoDB, the document database at the root of the MERN stack. MongoDB was designed to store JSON data natively, and everything from its command line interface to its query language is built on JSON and JavaScript.

MongoDB works extremely well with Node.js, and makes storing, manipulating, and representing JSON data at every tier of your application incredibly easy. For cloud-native applications, MongoDB Atlas makes it even easier, by giving you an auto-scaling MongoDB cluster on the cloud provider of your choice, as easy as a few button clicks.

Express.js is a server-side application framework that wraps HTTP requests and responses, and makes it easy to map URLs to server-side functions. React.js is a frontend JavaScript framework for building interactive user interfaces in HTML, and communicating with a remote server.

The combination means that JSON data flows naturally from front to back, making it fast to build. Plus, you only have to know one programming language, and the JSON document structure, to understand the whole system!

MERN is the stack of choice for today’s web developers looking to move quickly, particularly for those with React.js experience.