Preparations

Full Stack

In web development, full stack refers to all the layers involved in building a working web application, including data modeling, server, network, user interface, business logic etc. In this module we will focus on the technical layers that are essential for a successful web product, which translates to front end and back end skills.

Why MEAN?

MEAN is a javascript framework based upon a collection of javascript frameworks. It combines the power of all four services and developers can focus on creating awesome apps.

Front end: AngularJS, Bootstrap* Back end: Node.js (powered Express) Data: MongoDB

MongoDB

MongoDB is a leading NoSQL database that uses JSON-style documents with dynamic schemas. Go through this very short tutorial for MongoDB here. This 5 minute tutorial will help you understand how MongoDB works as a noSQL DB service. Even though MongoDB is fast, scalable and easy to use, to make it work with the MEAN stack, we need an object modeling service called Mongoose.
Skim through the Mongoose guide (getting started) here to get a sense of how it works.

Express

Express is a minimal and flexible node.js web application framework, providing a robust set of features for building single and multi-page, and hybrid web applications. You will not be coding anything for Express in this module (already done by MEAN.io). Make sure you know what it is and why it's used.

AngularJS

Very important to this module. Go through the tutorial here.

Bootstrap

Bootstrap is the default front end framework for the MEAN.io project. Though you could switch to other frameworks such as Foundation pretty easily.