Server-side Development with NodeJS, Express and MongoDB

This course deals with all things server-side. We base the entire course around the NodeJS platform. We start with a brief overview of the Web protocols: HTTP and HTTPS. We examine NodeJS and NodeJS modules: Express for building web servers. On the database side, we review basic CRUD operations, NoSQL databases, in particular MongoDB and Mongoose for accessing MongoDB from NodeJS. We examine the REST concepts and building a RESTful API. We touch upon authentication and security. Finally we review backend as a service (BaaS) approaches, including mobile BaaS, both open-source and commercial BaaS services.

At the end of this course, you will be able to:

- Demonstrate an understanding of server-side concepts, CRUD and REST
- Build and configure a backend server using NodeJS framework
- Build a RESTful API for the front-end to access backend services

• Introduction to Server-side Development
• In this module you will be introduced to Node, Node modules and the Node HTTP server. You will learn about the Express framework and how to set up a REST API using Express.
• Data, Data, Where art Thou Data?
• This module looks in detail at data storage with MongoDB, the popular NoSQL database. You will learn first about Express generator for scaffolding an Express application. Then you will learn about MongoDB. You will learn how to interact with MongoDB from a Node application. Then you will learn the Mongoose ODM to create schemas and models, and interact with MongoDB server.
• Halt! Who goes there?
• This module is dedicated to user authentication. We first develop a full-fledged REST API server with Express, Mongo and Mongoose. Thereafter we examine basic authentication and session-based authentication briefly. We then develop token-based authentication with the support of JSON web tokens and the Passport module.
• Backend as a Service (BaaS)
• In this module we learn about Mongoose population, a way of cross-referencing documents and populating the documents from other documents. We then review secure communication using HTTPS. We look at Backend as a Service (BaaS) and take a brief look at Loopback.