You may have heard the term MEAN Stack in web development. I will explain where this term comes from, and what are the advantages of creating web applications using the MEAN Stack. MEAN Stack stands for MongoDB, Express.js, Angular and Node.js. Let’s first talk about the different parts that make up a MEAN Stack application, describe why it’s a good idea to create web applications by using it.
MongoDB
MongoDB is a NoSQL database. This is the database of choice for developers building MEAN applications. The data that’s stored in a MongoDB database is in JSON format. This makes it an excellent candidate for the database in this type of applications.
Express.js
Express.js is one of the most popular frameworks, used with Node.js, for creating web applications. It allows developers to easily respond to HTTP user requests.
Angular
Angular was designed by Google to allow developers to create web applications (you can create other types of applications with Angular, but I’ll stick to web applications in this post). Ever since version 2 of Angular (also known as Angular 2), the language that you have to use is TypeScript. This is a Microsoft language that’s designed to improve upon plain JavaScript. So, if you already know JavaScript, then the learning curve for coding in TypeScript is not steep at all.
Node.js
Historically, JavaScript in web applications worked in the browser only. However, Node.js is JavaScript that runs on the server. You can think of it as the server for a MEAN application.
Advantages
As you can see from the above, all of the technologies in a MEAN application use JavaScript as the programming language. This provides a big advantage, in the sense that all the stacks of the application use the same language. It is especially advantageous for small teams, like in startups, where one developer handles all the different parts of the application.
Conclusion
MEAN Stack applications use MongoDB, Express.js, Angular and Node.js for developing web applications. It is a great way for web developers to use the same language across all the parts of the web application. In some cases, developers can replace Angular with Rect. In which case, you would refer to it as the MERN Stack. If you have any questions, feel free to leave a comment here, or use the contact page.
