Beginning MERN Stack: Build and Deploy a Full Stack MongoDB, Express, React, Node.js App

This book was just what I needed. I already have a strong background in .NET Core but needed to get into React for dashboard projects. Everything in this book translates excellently for me from that background to MERN. Its all just a stack of some kind, so concepts are reusable if someone is new to web dev. This book is a refreshingly short effective step into the MERN waters. Highly recommended.

Greg Lim, without a question, is one of my favorite book authors. He has an excellent writing style which is very practical and provides very useful short explanations. His strategy and this book strategy is learning by doing.In this book, the author takes us through a journey to learn the MERN stack (MongoDB, Express, React, Node.js). The book contains 26 chapters, most of them are very short, but they are properly divided with proper content and examples. The book develops a movie review application. In that application, (i) the movie information (such as titles, rates, and reviews) is stored in a Mongo database, (ii) the backend for that application is developed with Node.js and Express (as a REST application, which takes the information from the Mongo database and return JSON data), and (iii) the frontend is developed with React (as a single-page application), which takes the movie information from the Express REST application.Important elements to highlight: (i) the book uses a great architecture, for example, in the backend side, you will have proper controllers (as classes with methods, which is not very common in many Express examples, but in my opinion, it is the best strategy, it allows you to have your code more organized), you also will have proper routes and DAOs. (ii) the book teaches you the basics of React. You will learn how to create components, how to use React router, how to pass information between components, how to use the React state, and many more. Advanced elements are not described in this book. (iii) The code examples are small and they are easy to follow (which is great), the book also uses Bootstrap, which in my opinion is the best strategy, due to it is simple and world-wide used. And (iv) in the last chapters you will deploy your application over the cloud, you will use free versions of Netlify and Heroku to deploy your backend and frontend apps.If you like learning by doing, and avoiding long explanations, this book is perfect for you. I totally recommend this book for anyone who wants to learn about the MERN stack. Congratulations to the author.

Overall a book book for beginners

The repository was not working so I followed the instruction. I wrote an email to support but no reply.Backend part was pretty nice! All working well, simple, clear, following standards.FE part - React - here the “fun” started. I got many warnings and errors, outdated usage, messy bootstrap structure and code blocks were added by big chunks so was hard to follow, I gave up and I need to proceed with FE by my own.Deployment part was pretty basic, I’d expect few more pages just for deployment and a lifecycle.

Very easy book to follow and learn from. Instructions are detailed and code explanation helps discern how each piece works. Simple project to start and can be tweaked to add to a portfolio

This book provides a very hands on approach to dipping your toes into MERN dev. The author gives you all the code you need and he breaks down what each line of code does and why you need it to make the final product. Highly recommend if you want a project-oriented intro to MERN.

I recently purchased this book and only through chapter 5 but I’m loving it so far; the explanations are clearly thought out and easy to understand. I would highly recommend this as a go to resource for someone else just starting out!

I am starting to develop a career in full stack development and this book has helped understand the development concepts