how I went about picking a stack for my prototype web app

1. AngularJS
Angular + Node/Express + MongoDB
Brent Goldstein
brent@kubilateam.com
Full JS Stack

2. Back Story
● Build a prototype web app
○ Why? -- Learn new technologies, act like a startup
● Focused on SMB enterprise use-cases
○ Lots of data to visualize, manage
● What technologies to pick?
○ Client
○ Server
○ Database

3. Strategy for picking Technologies
Go with what works -- for you
You’ll need to learn new stuff, it should be fun
If it seems like it does not fit, you can try something else
If you’re a perfectionist, you’re done for
You’ll know when it ‘feels right enough’ and stuff flows
Caveat -- This works for me, figure out your strategy

4. Client? Lots of choices, but only a few
- I’m a software guy, needs to be like software
- Must have good data-binding
- I’m not really into Java (yes, really)
Ruby/Rails?
- I’ve done Ruby (ok, but review options...)
Javascript Client Frameworks?
- AngularJS
- Ember

5. Javascript? Really?
Hey, I’ve never coded Javascript.
Is this a language for ‘real’ software?
The answer is……. (let’s diverge for a moment)

6. Pick a server?
I already said I’m not into Java (really)
OK, so what now?
Well, it needs to be
- Lightweight, FAST
- OpenSource, Manageable
Uhhh yep -- Node.js (more Javascript….)

7. Node + Express
So, you’re saying I should write my own server
with Node.js?
Yes, definitely. Because Express is frickn’ brilliant
var express = require('express'),http = require('http');
var app = express();
app.use(express.static(path.join(__dirname, 'public')));
http.createServer(app).listen(app.get('port'), function(){
console.log('listening on port ' + app.get('port'));
});
Static file server in a few lines...

8. Databases, databases
A couple of considerations
- Development, iteration effort
- SQL schema migration and admin is a pain (to me)
Data pipelining
- How will the client model data?
- ORM kinda sucks
Should this be the first slide in the deck?

9. Crap, another slide on databases
NoSQL pro/con
- Align structure with application model
→ less complex code, probably more performant
- Can’t use relational schema models
→ Well, I’m totally OK with this
- Must learn ‘collections’ and working w/o joins
→ I’m OK with this too
- Fast read performance with right ‘schema’
→ I’m really OK with this

10. Yet another @#(*! slide on databases
NoSQL Choices?
- Proven in commercial apps
- Good community acceptance/support
- I’m no expert, so just pick one to start
with good Node.js support
Let’s go with MongoDB (at least try it)

11. Where are we at?
Node.JS and MongoDB for the server side.
These are both Javascript. Well, Mongo is very
Javascript compatible, JSON data
Now I’m definitely into a pure JS client
framework. Which one?
Uhh, try AngularJS. Why? Gut feel after
investigating both, it seems more like software.

12. Stack Data Pipeline
MongoDB
- JSON data works great → Modeled for the app needs
Server talks to Mongo
- Aggregate / join data
- JSON data works great → NO ORM
- Return through a pure REST api
AngularJS client
- Talks to server only via REST api, never to Mongo
- JSON data works great → NO ORM

13. Back to that Javascript thing
Javascript is a good core language
Very simple syntax, don’t let this fool you
(an aside, complex syntax does not a good language make)
Closures are super powerful in an event based
asynchronous environment
And, it’s not just the language, it’s the
ecosystem.

14. Javascript Client Server Similarities
Browsers operates as
- single threaded, event driven, asynchronous
Node.js runs V8 engine Holy crap, it’s the same
- single threaded, event driven, asynchronous
Learn asynchronous Javascript programming
with Angular + Node.js at the same time
Start thinking ‘closure’

15. Javascript and Node Packages
Huge capability from the NPM Registry
NPM == Node Package Manager
https://npmjs.org/
Some favorites:
- mongodb (mongoDB driver)
- express (web server framework)
- xml2js (xml parser)
- async (synchronizing constructs, serial, parallel)
- aws-sdk (integrate with AWS S3, CloudFront, etc)

16. Deployment
Again, use what works for your situation
For me, PaaS to start with low admin overhead
- Heroku -- Supports node servers
- MongoLab -- Hosted MongoDB
Both have free tiers for development, and scale
up for true production

17. thanks
contact: brent@kubilateam.com