In this chapter, we developed a fully functioning standalone server-side application using Node, Express, and MongoDB, covering the first part of the MERN skeleton application. In the backend, we implemented the following features:
- A user model for storing user data, implemented with Mongoose
- User API endpoints to perform CRUD operations, implemented with Express
- User auth for protected routes, implemented with JWT and express-jwt
We also set up the development flow by configuring Webpack to compile ES6 code, and Nodemon to restart the server when the code changes. Finally, we checked the implementation of the APIs using the Advanced Rest API Client extension app for Chrome.
We are now ready to extend this backend application code in the following chapter, to add the React frontend and complete the MERN skeleton application.
