Over the last couple of years, the MERN stack rose as a popular stack that eases delivering high-quality products with scalable technologies.
Yet, there are some best practices to consider before starting your process, even if you are building MERN stack practice projects!
From its components to its role in Computer Science and UX/UI Design, let’s dive into some key considerations for implementing MERN Stack products successfully.
What is MERN Stack?
When we talk about the MERN Stack, we must consider its four main components: Mongo, Express, React, and Node.
Conceived in 2013, the MERN Stack was created to make the Product and Software Development process simpler and more effective.
One of the key reasons for its popularity is the fact that it harnesses a single scripting language (JavaScript) for both its Front and Back End operations.
It also has a simple learning curve and great community support, and that’s without mentioning its several packages and libraries for high flexibility and scalability.
As a result, the MERN Stack is suitable for a wide array of applications and companies, from small start-ups to large enterprises.
Best Practices for MERN Stack
As mentioned, the MERN Stack comprises four technologies that provide an end-to-end solution for building modern and advanced applications.
Let's divide the best practices according to each of its components:
1. MongoDB Best Practices
Also known as just Mongo, MongoDB is a document-oriented NoSQL Database Management System (DBMS).
In terms of best practices, we can mention Mongoose, the popular JS library that allows to define schemes in order to guarantee consistency in structuring and validating properties.
You can also harness Middleware for data validation or registration in addition to lean queries, for which Mongoose provides fully populated documents from queries by default.
Additionally, there’s the function .lean() that returns plain JavaScript objects without format.
Express.js Best Practices
The stack's only application framework is ideal for building server-side applications with Node.js.
Express also allows harnessing Middleware, which is great for data validation, authentication and registration.
You can enable HTTP caching to reduce server requests with a template engine that allows for writing simple HTML markups, rendering HTML pages, and easing code reuse.
Here, error-handling middleware allows you to detect and handle errors in your routes or middleware functions.
As a result, you can ensure that your solution doesn't crash and that, in case that happens, users receive the appropriate error messages.
React.js Best Practices
The JS library React is key in building MERN Stack User Interfaces that meet expectations, and a best practice is leveraging its functional and easier-to-test components.
It's also key to properly integrate hooks that let you manage state and side effects in your functional components instead of just using class-based components.
You can use hooks like useMemo and useCallback to optimize the performance of its components, avoiding unnecessary renderings.
Likewise, context APIs can help to pass data down the component tree without passing props through multiple levels.
Tip: the React Developer Tools browser extension can be quite useful for debugging and inspecting your React components!
Node.js Best Practices
Lastly, Node.js is a JS environment for building scalable network apps, known for its high capacity to handle large simultaneous connections.
Here, the async/await syntax can help when writing asynchronous code to ease reading and debugging, managing concurrent connections and getting data from servers.
You can also use commonJS or ES modules to organize its code into small, reusable pieces and a memory cache like Redis or Memcached to reduce your memory load.
10 Best Practices for MERN Stack Development
Other practices can be incorporated into MERN Stack, including:
1. MERN Stack Modular Architecture
MERN uses a modular architecture where each component is isolated— if there’s a change in a component, it won’t affect others. This architecture eases maintenance and updating!
2. MERN Stack Code Reusability
This stack fosters code reusability: teams can build components that can be used later and save time, reduce written code, and consolidate an efficient development process.
3. MERN Stack State Management
With state management handled in a central location, teams can store and manage components’ data to guarantee accessibility in all full-stack MERN applications.
4. MERN Stack Linting Tools
Linting tools verify code quality and help maintain coherence, which facilitates maintenance and updating. Some key MERN stack linting tools include ESLint and Prettier.
5. MERN Stack Testing
MERN eases testing procedures with different tools like Jest, Mocha and Chai, whether it’s unit testing for individual components of integration tests to check interactions.
6. MERN Stack CI/CD
While Continuous Integration refers to testing code changes in the codebase, Continuous Deployment is the practice of deploying code changes to production.
Developers and teams can leverage CI/CD when developing MERN-based products to guarantee code changes are implemented quickly and efficiently.
7. MERN Stack Version Control Systems
Version Control Systems like Git allow devs to collaborate on code, track changes and return to previous versions, which is key to guaranteeing real-time updated codebases.
8. MERN Stack and Docker
With Docker, MERN stack devs can implement and execute solutions easily on any supported platform, optimizing management and scaling as containers are deployed.
9. MERN Stack and Scalability
Scalability is one of MERN Stack's best qualities! With load balancing and horizontal scaling, teams can plan from the beginning to ensure the product handles increasing traffic levels.
10. MERN Stack and User Experience
While often underestimated, developing easy-to-use and intuitive User Interfaces that consider speed and responsiveness is key for all Software Development processes!
Key Considerations for MERN Stack Development
Beyond these practices, knowing about MERN hosting is also quite important, especially considering that choosing the best fit can be crucial to your product's success.
In security terms, betting on input validation, data sanitization and password hashing recommendations is required to guarantee safe solutions.
To protect sensitive data, use secure protocols like HTTPS for all communications between the front and back end and implement authentication and authorization processes.
When discussing maintainability, follow procedures such as descriptive variable names, code commenting and organizing into compact, reusable functions and components.
Remember to debug your front-end and back-end code through tools like Chrome DevTools and Node.js debugger to log errors and exceptions to help diagnose problems.
Conclusion
It's vital to keep up with the latest trends on the MERN Stack through experts, blogs, conferences and, most importantly, experimenting with MERN stack practice projects!
Knowing the MERN stack requires a deep understanding of components and interactions— feel free to follow these best practices to have a solid background that allows you to test your hypotheses and build disruptive solutions!
