Tag Archive for MEAN

MongoDB Stitch – the latest, and best way to build your app

MongoDB Stitch – the latest, and best way to build your app

In a recent 6 part blog series on the MEAN & MERN stacks, I stepped through how you can build modern applications on a stack of MongoDB, Node.js, Express, and Angular or React. What if there was a service that took care of everything apart from the from application frontend (Angular, React, or other technology)? [MongoDB Stitch](http://www.clusterdb.com/mongodb/modern-application-stack-part-1-introducing-the-mean-stack “Backend as a Service for MongoDB”) is that service, it’s a new backend as a service (BaaS) for applications usinf MongoDB.

The purpose of this post is to introduce what MongoDB Stitch is and, most importantly, demonstrate exactly how you use it – both configuring your app through the Stitch backend UI, and invoking that app backend from your frontend code or other services. Note that MongoDB Stitch is currently in beta and so you should expect the UI to evolve over the coming weeks and months. The tutorials in the Stitch documentation provide always up-to-date examples for creating Stitch applications.

What is MongoDB Stitch?

MongoDB Stitch is a BaaS, giving developers a REST-like API (plus SDKs for JavaScript, iOS, and Android) to MongoDB, and composability with other services, backed by a robust permissioning system for configuring fine-grained data access controls.

Stitch allows developers to focus on building applications rather than on managing data manipulation code or service integration. As application and display logic continues to move into the frontend web and mobile tiers, the remaining backend is often dominated by code to handle storing and retrieving data from a database, enforcing security and data privacy, and integrating various services. MongoDB Stitch provides that same functionality declaratively, rather than using procedural boilerplate backend code.

The data access rules in MongoDB stitch are entirely declarative and designed to be expressive enough to handle any application, including sensitive data such as payment details. For a given collection, you can restrict what operations are permitted and what fields can be accessed – according to user id, role, or custom criteria. Access can even be limited to specific aggregations – allowing analysts to work with the data without exposing any individual’s private information.

If you already have data in MongoDB Atlas, you can start by safely exposing it to new applications via Stitch’s API – perhaps allowing read access to specific fields. You can authenticate users through built-in integrations with auth providers.

In my previous blog series, I detailed how to work with the technologies that are typically used to make up a modern application backend: MongoDB for the database, Node.js to run the backend logic, and a framework such as Express to provide a REST API:

MEAN Stack and MERN Stack

MEAN Stack and MERN Stack

Stitch, greatly simplifies your development and ops efforts for new applications by providing the entire backend as managed service. Even your frontend application code is simplified, as Stitch provides idiomatic SDKs for JavaScript, iOS, and Android – so you don’t need to code HTTP requests directly. Further, the SDK/API isn’t limited to just accessing MongoDB data, you can also use it for any other service registered with your Stitch application backend.

MongoDB Stitch BaaS architecture

MongoDB Stitch BaaS architecture

Building an application with MongoDB Stitch

You can get started with MongoDB Stitch for free – use it with your free MongoDB Atlas cluster. If you already registered for MongoDB Atlas then you can create your MongoDB Stitch apps with your existing Atlas group.

Creating your application in MongoDB Stitch

The app that we’re building will record user check-ins (from FourSquare or an iOS app or an iOS Workflow applet) in MongoDB Atlas, and then make them visible to the user and their friends through a React/JavaScript web app.

As we work through the tutorial, no previous knowledge is assumed, but at points, you may need to refer back to the earlier blog series (e.g. for details on creating a React application frontend).

If you haven’t done so already, create a new MongoDB Atlas cluster, selecting the M0 instance type for the free tier (if you already have an Atlas cluster, feel free to use that):

Creating a MongoDB Atlas cluster

Creating a MongoDB Atlas cluster

After the cluster has spun up, click on Stitch Apps and then Create New Application:

Create new MongoDB Stitch application

Create new MongoDB Stitch application

Give the application a name and ensure that the correct Atlas cluster is selected:

Name your MongoDB Stitch BaaS appName your MongoDB Stitch BaaS app

Name your MongoDB Stitch BaaS appName your MongoDB Stitch BaaS app

Once you’ve created the application, take a note of its App ID (in this example trackme-pkjif) as this will be needed by your application’s frontend:

MongoDB Stitch BaaS application details

MongoDB Stitch BaaS application details

Backend database and rules

Select the mongodb-atlas service, followed by the Rules tab – this is where you define who can access what data from the MongoDB database:

MongoDB Stitch BaaS data rules

MongoDB Stitch BaaS data rules

Set the database name to trackme and the collection to checkins:

MongoDB Stitch – naming a collection

MongoDB Stitch – naming a collection

MongoDB Stitch - select collection

MongoDB Stitch – select collection

A typical record from the track.checkins collection will look like this:

db.checkins.find().sort({_id: -1}).skip(2).limit(1).pretty()
{
    "_id" : ObjectId("597f14fe4fdd1f5eb78e142f"),
    "owner_id" : "596ce3304fdd1f3e885999cb",
    "email" : "me@gmail.com",
    "venueName" : "Starbucks",
    "date" : "July 31, 2017 at 12:27PM",
    "url" : "http://4sq.com/LuzfAn",
    "locationImg" : "http://maps.google.com/maps/api/staticmap?center=51.522058,-0.722497&zoom=16&size=710x440&maptype=roadmap&sensor=false&markers=color:red%7C51.522058,-0.722497&key=AIzaSyC2e-2nWNBM0VZMERf2I6m_PLZE4R2qAoM"
}

Select the Field Rules tab and note the default read and write rules for the Top-Level document:

Defining a MongoDB Stitch write rule

Defining a MongoDB Stitch write rule

The default read rule is:

{
  "owner_id": "%%user.id"
}

With this configuration, a document can only be read from this collection if its owner_id field matches the id of the application user making the request (i.e. a user can only read their own data). %%user is an expansion which gives the rule access to information about the application end-user making the request – here we’re interested in their unique identifier (id). Whenever a user adds a document to a collection, Stitch will set the owner_id to the ID of that user.

Overwrite the write rule with the following, then press SAVE:

{
  "%or": [
    {
      "%%prevRoot.owner_id": "%%user.id"
    },
    {
      "%%prevRoot": {
        "%exists": 0
      }
    }
  ]
}

%%prevRoot is another expansion, representing the state of the document before the operation. You can read the above logic as: “Allow the write to succeed if either the the same user previously added the document or the document didn’t exist (i.e. it’s an insert)”.

In addition to general rules for the document, read/write rules can be added for individual fields. Select the owner_id field and ensure that the validation rule is set to:

{
  "%or": [
    {
      "%%prev": "%%user.id"
    },
    {
      "%%prev": {
        "%exists": false
      }
    }
  ]
}
MongoDB Stitch field validation rule

MongoDB Stitch field validation rule

Filters control which documents a user sees when viewing a collection:

MongoDB Stitch collection filter

MongoDB Stitch collection filter

Ensure that When == {"%%true": true} and Match Expression == {"owner_id": "%%user.id"}. This means that the filter is always applied and that a user will only see their own documents.

You should also add rules for the trackme.users collection, where a typical document will look like:

> db.users.findOne()
{
    "_id" : ObjectId("596e354f46224c3c723d968a"),
    "owner_id" : "596ce47c4fdd1f3e88599ac4",
    "userData" : {
        "email" : "andrew.morgan@mongodb.com",
        "name" : "Andrew Morgan",
        "picture" : "https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-lCBSTZFxhw0/AAAAAAAAAAI/AAAAAAAAAB4/vX9Sg4dO8xE/photo.jpg"
    },
    "friends" : [
        "billy@gmail.com",
        "granny@hotmail.com"
    ]
}

Setup trackme.users with the same rules and filters as trackme.checkins.

Values/constants

Stitch provides a simple and secure way to store values associated with your application – a perfect example is your keys for public cloud services. Set up the following values:

Define MongoDB Stitch BaaS values

Define MongoDB Stitch BaaS values

By default, your WebHooks, named pipelines, and frontend application code can read the values. By setting the value to be private, you prevent access from your frontend code (or any other users of the Stitch API). The example React frontend code refers to the twilioNumber value (%%values.twilioNumber) when building a pipeline (if you wanted to keep the value more secure then you could implement a named pipeline to send the Twilio message and make twilioNumber private):

this.props.stitchClient.executePipeline([
  {
    service: "myTwilio",
    action: "send",
    args: {
      to: this.state.textNumber,
      from: 
        "%%values.twilioNumber",  // Relies on twilioNumber not being private
      body: name + " last checked into " + venue
    }
  }
])

Authentication providers

A key feature of Stitch is authenticating your app’s end users – after which you can configure precisely what data and services they’re entitled to access (e.g., to view documents that they created through their actions in the app). The following types of authentication are all supported:

  • Anonymous (the user doesn’t need to register or log in, but they’re still assigned an ID which is used to control what they see)
  • Email/Password
  • Google
  • Facebook
  • Custom (using JSON web tokens)

From the Authentication section of the Stitch UI, turn on Google authentication, providing the Client ID and Client Secret generated by Google. If you are running your app on your local machine then add http://localhost:3000/ as a Redirect URI; if hosting externally, add the DNS hostname. Enable Name, Picture, and Email so that your app has access to those user credentials from Google. Click Save.

MongoDB Stitch BaaS – adding Google authentication

MongoDB Stitch BaaS – adding Google authentication

Turn on Facebook authentication, providing the Client ID and Client Secret generated by Facebook. If you are running your app on your local machine then add http://localhost:3000/ as a Redirect URI; if hosting externally, add the DNS hostname. Enable Name, Picture, and Email so that your app has access to those user credentials from Facebook. Click Save.

MongoDB Stitch BaaS - adding Facebook authentication

MongoDB Stitch BaaS – adding Facebook authentication

MongoDB Stitch BaaS authentication providers

MongoDB Stitch BaaS authentication providers

Adding other services (Slack & Twilio)

Stitch has some services pre-integrated, for others, you can use the HTTP Service.

When a user checks in, a notification will be sent to a Slack channel using Stitch’s [Slack Service](https://docs.mongodb.com/stitch/services/slack/ “MongoDB Stitch Slack service). Click on Add Service and then select Slack, name the service mySlack (your pipelines and WebHooks can refer to the service using that name), and then click Add service.

MongoDB Stitch, adding Slack service

MongoDB Stitch, adding Slack service

In the Config tab, enter the Team ID and Incoming WebhookURL provided by Slack:

MongoDB Stitch configuring Slack service

MongoDB Stitch configuring Slack service

There is no need to add any WebHooks (the app will send out Slack messages but will not receive any). On the Rules tab, enable Post (as the Stitch app must use the HTTP POST method to send messages to Stitch’s API), and then Save:

MongoDB Stitch adding Slack rules

MongoDB Stitch adding Slack rules

From the React web app, a logged-in user has the option to send an SMS text message, containing their latest check-in, to a phone number of their choice. To enable that service, you must configure the Twilio Service through the Slack UI:

MongoDB Stitch, configuring Twilio service

MongoDB Stitch, configuring Twilio service

The values to use for the SSID and the Auth Token can be retrieved after registering with Twilio. As with Slack, the app will not accept incoming messages from Twilio, and so there is no need to define any incoming WebHooks. In the Rules tab, enable the Send action and click Save:

Configure Twilio rules in MongoDB Stitch

Configure Twilio rules in MongoDB Stitch

Named service pipelines

Service pipelines are used to execute a sequence of actions. As with the Stitch features you’ve already seen, pipelines are defined using JSON documents. You can create pipelines on the fly in your application code, or you can preconfigure Named Pipelines. The advantages of named pipelines are:

  • Code reuse: you can create the named pipeline once in the Stich backend, and then invoke it from multiple frontend locations (e.g., from multiple places in a web app, as well as from iOS and Android apps).
  • Simpler code: keep the frontend application code clean by hiding the pipeline’s details in the Stitch backend.
  • Enhanced security: access to secret resources, such as API keys, can be encapsulated within the Stitch backend. The alternative is to code them in the device-side code, where a user may attempt to reverse-engineer them.

When creating a named pipeline, there is a set of information you must always provide:

  • The name of the pipeline. The name is how your frontend application code, WebHooks, or other named pipelines can execute this pipeline.
  • Whether the pipeline is private. If set to true, you can only invoke the pipeline from within the Stitch backend (from another named pipeline or a WebHook). If set to false then you can also invoke it directly from your application’s frontend code (or from Stitch’s Debug Console).
  • If a service accessed by your pipeline would otherwise be blocked by that resource’s rules (e.g. a MongoDB document only being readable by the user that created it), enabling Skip Rules overrides those rules.
  • You can control under what scenarios a pipeline is allowed to run by providing a JSON document – if it evaluates to true then the pipeline can run.
  • You can define a set of Parameters that you can provide when invoking the pipeline. You can also tag as Required, those parameters which you must always provide.
  • The Output Type indicates whether the pipeline will return a Single Document, Boolean, or Array.
  • The rest of the pipeline definition consists of one or more stages, where each stage passes its results as input to the next. For each stage, you define:
    • Which Service to use (e.g. MongoDB, Twilio, Slack, or built-in (such as expressions, or literals))
    • The Action associated with that service (e.g. for a MongoDB service, you might pick find or insert)
    • The body of the action
    • Bind Data to %%Vars lets you create variables based on other values. When defining the value of one of these variables, you can use expansions such as:
      • %%args.parameter-name to access parameters passed to the pipeline
      • %%item.field-name to access the results of the previous stage
      • %%values.value-name to access pre-defined values/constants
    • You can access the variable values from the Action document using %%vars.variable-name.

The first pipeline to create is recentCheckins which returns an array of the user’s most recent check-ins. When invoking the pipeline, the caller must provide a single parameter (number) which specifies how many check-ins it should return:

Creating MongoDB Stitch named pipeline

Creating MongoDB Stitch named pipeline

Note that the trackme.checkins collection already includes filters and rules to ensure that a user only sees their own check-ins and so the query subdocument can be empty.

Create the pipeline by pasting in the Action and Bind Data To %%Vars documents:

Action:

{
  "database": "trackme",
  "collection": "checkins",
  "query": {},
  "sort": {
    "_id": -1
  },
  "project": {},
  "limit": "%%vars.limit"
}

If you’re not familiar with the MongoDB Query Language, this searches the trackme.checkins collection, reverse sorts on the _id (most recently inserted documents have the highest value), and then discards all but the first %%vars.limit documents.

Bind Data To %%Vars:

{
  "limit": "%%args.number"
}

This creates a LET statement where %%vars.limit is bound to the number parameter which the caller passes to the pipeline.

The second named pipeline to define is friendsCheckins to retrieve the most recent check-ins of users who have befriended the current user. Again, the caller must provide a parameter indicating the total number of check-ins it should return:

Define friendsCheckin named pipeline in MongoDB Stitch

Define friendsCheckin named pipeline in MongoDB Stitch

Create the pipeline by pasting in the Action and Bind Data To %%Vars documents:

Action:

{
  "database": "trackme",
  "collection": "users",
  "pipeline": [
    {
      "$match": {
        "owner_id": "%%vars.owner_id"
      }
    },
    {
      "$project": {
        "userData.email": 1,
        "_id": 0
      }
    },
    {
      "$lookup": {
        "from": "users",
        "localField": "userData.email",
        "foreignField": "friends",
        "as": "friendedMe"
      }
    },
    {
      "$project": {
        "friendedMe.owner_id": 1
      }
    },
    {
      "$unwind": {
        "path": "$friendedMe"
      }
    },
    {
      "$lookup": {
        "from": "checkins",
        "localField": "friendedMe.owner_id",
        "foreignField": "owner_id",
        "as": "friendsCheckins"
      }
    },
    {
      "$project": {
        "friendsCheckins": 1
      }
    },
    {
      "$unwind": {
        "path": "$friendsCheckins"
      }
    },
    {
      "$sort": {
        "friendsCheckins._id": -1
      }
    },
    {
      "$limit": "%%vars.number"
    },
    {
      "$group": {
        "_id": "$friendsCheckins.email",
        "checkins": {
          "$push": {
            "venueName": "$friendsCheckins.venueName",
            "date": "$friendsCheckins.date",
            "url": "$friendsCheckins.url",
            "locationImg": "$friendsCheckins.locationImg"
          }
        }
      }
    }
  ]
}

If you’re not familiar with the format of this action, take a look at the MongoDB Aggregation Pipeline.

Bind Data To %%Vars:

{
  "number": "%%args.number",
  "owner_id": "%%user.id"
}

As before, this makes the values passed in as parameters accessible to the pipeline’s action section.

Before letting the user add a new email address to their array of friends, it’s useful if you check that they aren’t already friends:

Define the alreadyAFriend named pipeline in MongoDB Stitch

Define the alreadyAFriend named pipeline in MongoDB Stitch

Action:

{
  "database": "trackme",
  "collection": "users",
  "query": {
    "friends": "%%vars.email"
  }
}

Because of the filter on the trackme.users collection, find operation will only look at this user, and so all the query needs to do is check if the provided email address already exists in the document’s array of friends.

Bind Data To %%Vars:

{
  "email": "%%args.friendsEmail"
}

Once your application has checked that the requested friend isn’t already listed, you can call the addFrriend pipeline to add their email address:

Define the addFriend named pipeline in MongoDB Stitch

Define the addFriend named pipeline in MongoDB Stitch

Action:

{
  "database": "trackme",
  "collection": "users",
  "query": {},
  "update": {
    "$push": {
      "friends": "%%vars.email"
    }
  },
  "upsert": false,
  "multi": false
}

Bind Data To %%Vars:

{
  "email": "%%args.friendsEmail"
}

When a user checks in through FourSquare or our iOS Workflow app, we identify them by their email address rather than their owner_id; the ownerFromEmail pipeline retrieves the user’s owner_id using the email parameter:

Define the ownerFromEmail named pipeline in MongoDB Stitch

Define the ownerFromEmail named pipeline in MongoDB Stitch

Note that Skip Rules is enabled for the pipeline, so that it’s able to search all documents in the trackme.users collection. For extra security, we make it Private so that it can only be executed by other pipelines or WebHooks that we create.

Action:

{
  "database": "trackme",
  "collection": "users",
  "query": {
    "userData.email": "%%vars.email"
  },
  "project": {
    "_id": 0,
    "owner_id": 1
  },
  "limit": 1
}

Bind Data To %%Vars:

{
  "email": "%%args.email"
}

When a user checks in, we want to send a notification to our Slack channel – create the slackCheckin pipeline to do so:

Define the slackCheckin named pipeline in MongoDB Stitch

Define the slackCheckin named pipeline in MongoDB Stitch

The pipeline uses the mySlack service that we created earlier. Again, set it to Private so that it can only be called from other WebHooks or named pipelines.

Action:

{
  "channel": "trackme",
  "username": "%%vars.name",
  "text": "%%vars.text",
  "iconUrl": "%%values.stitchLogo"
}

Bind Data To %%Vars:

{
  "name": "%%args.email",
  "text": {
    "%concat": [
      "I just checked into ",
      "%%args.venue",
      ". ",
      "%%args.location"
    ]
  }
}

Working with other services – the HTTP service and WebHooks

The HTTP service fulfills two roles:

  • Makes outgoing HTTP calls to services (either public web services or your microservices)
  • Accepts incoming HTTP requests (through Stitch WebHooks) – allowing external services to trigger actions within your Stitch application

The TrackMe application uses WebHooks to receive notifications whenever one of our users checks in through FourSquare or the iOS Workflow app.

Create a new HTTP service called externalCheckin:

Create externalCheckin HTTP service in MongoDB Stitch

Create externalCheckin HTTP service in MongoDB Stitch

There’s no need to define any (outgoing) rules as our application doesn’t use this service to send out any requests.

Create the fourSquareCheckin WebHook:

Define fourSquareCheckin WebHook in MongoDB Stitch

Define fourSquareCheckin WebHook in MongoDB Stitch

To prevent another application sending your application bogus check-ins, enable Require Secret As Query Param and provide a secret (I’ve used 667, but for a production app, you’d want a stronger secret).

The WebHook consists of two stages. The first stage (Stage 0) uses the built-in expression action to build a JSON document containing the check-in data. Note that we form the locationImg field by adding our GoogleMapsStaticKey value to the end of the received URL (so that the new URL can be used by the frontend application code to retrieve the map image from Google).

Action (first stage):

{
  "expression": {
    "owner_id": "%%vars.owner.owner_id",
    "email": "%%vars.email",
    "venueName": "%%vars.venue",
    "date": "%%vars.date",
    "url": "%%vars.url",
    "locationImg": {
      "%concat": [
        "%%vars.location",
        "&key=",
        "%%values.GoogleMapsStaticKey"
      ]
    }
  }
}

When creating the variables to construct the expression, %%vars.owner is formed by invoking our ownerFromEmail named pipeline – passing in the received email address from the received HTTP body.

Bind Data To %%Vars (first stage):

{
  "owner": {
    "%pipeline": {
      "name": "ownerFromEmail",
      "args": {
        "email": "%%args.body.email"
      }
    }
  },
  "email": "%%args.body.email",
  "venue": "%%args.body.venue",
  "date": "%%args.body.checkinDate",
  "url": "%%args.body.url",
  "location": "%%args.body.location",
  "slackDummy": {
    "%pipeline": {
      "name": "slackCheckin",
      "args": {
        "email": "%%args.body.email",
        "venue": "%%args.body.venue",
        "location": {
          "%concat": [
            "%%args.body.location",
            "&key=",
            "%%values.GoogleMapsStaticKey"
          ]
        }
     }
    }
  }
}

When defining the variables, we also create a dummy variable (slackDummy) so that we can invoke the slackCheckin pipeline as a side effect.

The second stage takes that document and stores it in the trackme.checkins collection.

Action (second stage):

{
  "database": "trackme",
  "collection": "checkins"
}

Take a note of the WebHook URL (https://stitch.mongodb.com/api/client/v1.0/app/trackme-pkjif/svc/externalCheckin/incomingWebhook/598081f44fdd1f5eb7900c16 in this example) as this is where other services must send requests.

The second WebHook (appCheckin) will be invoked from the iOS Workflow app; it’s very similar to fourSquareCheckin but there’s no need to add the Google Maps key as for these check-ins, locationImg is the Imgur URL of a photo taken by the user at the venue.

Define appCheckin WebHook in MongoDB Stitch

Define appCheckin WebHook in MongoDB Stitch

Action (first stage):

{
  "expression": {
    "owner_id": "%%vars.owner.owner_id",
    "email": "%%vars.email",
    "venueName": "%%vars.venue",
    "date": "%%vars.date",
    "url": "%%vars.url",
    "locationImg": "%%vars.location"
  }
}

Bind Data To %%Vars (first stage):

{
  "owner": {
    "%pipeline": {
      "name": "ownerFromEmail",
      "args": {
        "email": "%%args.body.email"
      }
    }
  },
  "email": "%%args.body.email",
  "venue": "%%args.body.venue",
  "date": "%%args.body.date",
  "url": "%%args.body.url",
  "location": "%%args.body.location",
  "slackDummy": {
    "%pipeline": {
      "name": "slackCheckin",
      "args": {
        "email": "%%args.body.email",
        "venue": "%%args.body.venue",
        "location": {
          "%concat": [
            "%%args.body.location",
            "&key=",
            "%%values.GoogleMapsStaticKey"
          ]
        }
      }
    }
  }
}

WebHook definition (second stage):

{
  "database": "trackme",
  "collection": "checkins"
}

Take a note for the Webhook URL.

Checking into the app using WebHooks

Capturing FourSquare check-ins (via IFTTT)

IFTTT (If This Then That) is a free cloud service which allows you to automate tasks by combining existing services (Google Docs, Facebook, Instagram, Hue lights, Nest thermostats, GitHub, Trello, Dropbox,…). The name of the service comes from the simple pattern used for each Applet (automation rule): “IF This event occurs in service x Then trigger That action in service y”.

IFTTT includes a Maker service which can handle web requests (triggers) or send web requests (actions). In this case, you can create an Applet to invoke our fourSquareCheckin WebHook whenever you check in using the Swarm (Foursquare) app:

Define IFTTT applet for MongoDB Stitch app

Define IFTTT applet for MongoDB Stitch app

Note that you form the URL: (https://stitch.mongodb.com/api/client/v1.0/app/trackme-pkjif/svc/externalCheckin/incomingWebhook/598081f44fdd1f5eb7900c16?secret=667) from the WebHook URL, with the addition of the secret parameter.

The HTTP method is set to POST and the body is a JSON document formed from several variables provided by the FourSquare service:

{
    "email":"me@gmail.com",
    "venue":"{{VenueName}}",
    "checkinDate":"{{CheckinDate}}",
    "url":"{{VenueUrl}}",
    "location":"{{VenueMapImageUrl}}"
}

In this example, the email is hard-coded, and so all check-ins will be registered by the same user. A production application would need a better solution.

Checking in from an iPhone (via the Workflow iOS app)

iOS Workflow has some similarities with IFTTT, but there are also some significant differences:

  • Workflow runs on your iOS device rather than in the cloud.
  • You trigger Workflows by performing actions on your iOS device (e.g. pressing a button); external events from cloud service trigger IFTTT actions.
  • Workflow allows much more involved patterns than IFTTT; it can loop, invoke multiple services, perform calculations, access local resources (e.g. camera and location information) on your device, and much more.

Implementing a Workflow involves dragging actions into the work area and then adding attributes to those actions (such as the URL for the TrackMe appCheckin WebHook). The result of one action is automatically used as the input to the next in the workflow. Results can also be stored in variables for use by later actions.

The TrackMe workflow:
* Retrieve the current location from your device & fetch details venue details
* If the venue details isn’t a URL then fetch an Apple Maps URL
* Take a new photo and upload it to Imgur
* Create a URL to invoke Trackme (ending in ?secret=668)
* Perform an HTTP POST to this URL, including check-in details in the body

This is the Check In workflow:

Define IFTTT applet for MongoDB Stitch app

Define IFTTT applet for MongoDB Stitch app

You can see the Workflow applet in action here:

Trackme MongoDB Stitch iOS Workflow in action

Trackme MongoDB Stitch iOS Workflow in action

Checking the trackme Slack channel confirms that the checkin was received. Note that you also check the results of the request in the *Logs * section of the Stitch Admin UI.

Check-in data shown in Slack

Check-in data shown in Slack

Building a frontend app using React

In The Modern Application Stack – Part 5: Using ReactJS, ES6 & JSX to Build a UI (the rise of MERN), I covered developing an application frontend using React. In this post, I don’t rehash the introduction to React, instead, I focus on how the React application interacts with its Stitch backend.

If you read my earlier post then you may recall that it included writing a data service to handle interactions with the backend (Mongopop) REST API; this isn’t required for the TrackMe frontend as the Stitch SDK provides access to the backend.

The TrackMe application frontend allows a user to:

  • Log in using Google or Facebook authentication
  • View their most recent check-ins
  • View the most recent check-ins of users that have added them to their list of friends
  • Add another user to their list of friends
  • Use Twilio to send an SMS text to any number, containing the user’s latest check-in information

Download the full application can from the trackme_MongoDB_Stitch GitHub project.

TrackMe ReactJS Web app frontend for MongoDB Stitch

TrackMe ReactJS Web app frontend for MongoDB Stitch

To run the TrackMe frontend:

git clone https://github.com/am-MongoDB/trackme_MongoDB_Stitch.git
cd trackme_MongoDB_Stitch
npm install

Edit the value of appId in src/config.js; replacing trackme-xxxx with the value for your Stitch app (found in the Clients tab in the Stitch console after creating your MongoDB Stitch app).

npm start

ReactJS Javascript (ES6) Client Code

The application’s React frontend is made up of the Trackme component which embeds four sub-components:

React components making up the TrackMe web app

React components making up the TrackMe web app

Any Stitch JavaScript application must start by importing the Stitch SKD StitchClient. The code then uses StitchClient to connect to MongoDB Stitch in the Trackme component’s constructor function within App.js. After instantiating stitchClient, it’s used to connect to the trackme database, followed by the checkins, and user collections:

import { StitchClient } from 'mongodb-stitch';
import config from './config';
...
class Trackme extends React.Component {
  constructor(props) {
    super(props);
        ...
    this.appId = config.appId;
        ...
    let options = {};

    this.stitchClient = new StitchClient(this.appId, options);

    this.db = this.stitchClient.service("mongodb",
        "mongodb-atlas").db("trackme");

    this.checkins = this.db.collection("checkins");
    this.users = this.db.collection("users");
    }
...
}

stitchClient is passed down to src/login.component.js, where a single line of code (this.props.stitchClient.authWithOAuth("facebook")) can be used to authenticate using Facebook:

<div
  onClick={() => 
    this.props.stitchClient.authWithOAuth("facebook")}
  className="signin-button">
  <div className="facebook-signin-logo" />
  <span className="signin-button-text">
    Sign in with Facebook
  </span>
</div>

The same component can use Google to authenticate in the same way:

<div
  onClick={() => 
    this.props.stitchClient.authWithOAuth("google")}
  className="signin-button"
>
  ...
  <span className="signin-button-text">
    Sign in with Google
  </span>
</div>

Whichever authentication method was used, common code displays the user’s name and avatar (in src/login.component.js):

this.props.stitchClient.userProfile()
.then(
  userData => {
    ...
    this.setState({userData: userData.data});
    ...
  },
  error => {
    // User hasn't authenticated yet
  })
...
{this.state.userData && 
    this.state.userData.picture
  ? <img src={this.state.userData.picture}
    className="profile-pic" alt="mug shot"/>
  : null}
<span className="login-text">
  <span className="username">
    {this.state.userData && this.state.userData.name 
      ? this.state.userData.name
      : "?"}
  </span>
</span>

Common code can logout the user (in src/login.component.js):

this.props.stitchClient.logout()

Once logged in, the application frontend can start making use of the services that we’ve configured for this app through the Stitch UI. In this case, we directly insert or update the user’s details in the trackme.users collection (in src/login.component.js):

this.props.userCollection.updateOne(
  {},  /* We don't need to identify the 
        user in the query as the 
        pipeline's filter will handle
        that.*/
  { 
    $set: {
      owner_id: 
      this.props.stitchClient.authedId(),
      userData: userData.data
    }
  },
  {upsert: true})
.then(
  result=>{},
  error=>{console.log("Error: " + error)}
  );

While that code is using the Stitch SDK/API, it is invoking the MongoDB Atlas service in a traditional manner by performing an updateOne operation but the Stitch filters and rules we’ve configured for the users collection will still be enforced.

In this React application frontend, I have intentionally used a variety of different ways to interact with Stitch – you will later see how to call a named pipeline and how to construct and execute a new pipeline on the fly.

When adding a new friend, two of the named pipelines we created through the Stitch UI (alreadyAFriend & addFriend) are executed to add a new email address to the list if and only if it isn’t already there (src/addfriend.component.js):

import { builtins } from 'mongodb-stitch';
...
this.props.stitchClient
  .executePipeline([
    builtins.namedPipeline('alreadyAFriend',
      {friendsEmail: email})])
  .then(
    response => {
      if (response.result[0]) {
        this.setState({error: email + 
          " has already been included as a friend."});
      } else
      {
        this.props.stitchClient
          .executePipeline([
            builtins.namedPipeline(
              'addFriend', {friendsEmail: email})])
          .then(
            response => {
              if (response.result[0]) {
                this.setState({success: 
                  email + " added as a friend; they can now see your checkins."});
              } else {
                this.setState({
                  error: "Failed to add " + email + " as a friend"});
              }
            },
            error => {
              this.setState({error: "Error: " + error});
              console.log({error: "Error: "+ error});
            }
          )
      }
    },
    error => {
      this.setState({error: "Error: " + error});
      console.log({error: "Error: " + error});
    }
  )
...

src/text.checkin.component.js finds the latest checkin (for this user), and then creates and executes a new service pipeline on the fly – sending the venue name to the requested phone number via Twilio:

this.props.checkins.find({},
  {sort: {_id: -1}, limit: 1})
.then (
  response => {
    venue = response[0].venueName;
    this.props.stitchClient.userProfile()
    .then (
      response => {
        name = response.data.name;
      })
    .then (
      response => {

        this.props.stitchClient
          .executePipeline([
            {
              service: "myTwilio",
              action: "send",
              args: {
                to: this.state.textNumber,
                from: "%%values.twilioNumber",
                body: name + " last cheked into " + venue
              }
            }
          ])
          .then(
            response => {
              this.setState({success: "Text has been sent to " +
                this.state.textNumber});
            },
            error => {
              this.setState({error: "Failed to send text: " + error});
              console.log({error: "Failed to send text: " + error});
          })
    })
  },
    error => {
    this.setState({error: "Failed to read the latest checkin: " + error});
    }
  )

Note that the pipeline refers to %%values.twilioNumber – this is why that value couldn’t be tagged as Private within the Stitch UI.

This is the result:

Text message from Twilio – via MongoDB Stitch

Text message from Twilio – via MongoDB Stitch

The checkins for the user and their friends are displayed in the Checkins component in src/checkins.component.js. The following code invokes the recentCheckins named pipeline (including the number parameter to request the 10 most recent checkins):

this.props.stitchClient.executePipeline([
    builtins.namedPipeline('recentCheckins', {number: 10})])
  .then(
    checkinData => {
      this.setState({checkins: checkinData.result[0].map((checkin, index) => 
        <li key={index}>
          <a href={checkin.url} target="_Blank">{checkin.venueName}</a>  
          ( {checkin.date} )
           <br/>
           <img src={checkin.locationImg} className="mapImg" 
            alt={"map of " + checkin.venueName}/>
        </li>
      )})
    },
    error => {
      console.log("Failed to fetch checkin data: " + error)
  })

A similar code block executes the friendsCheckin named pipeline and then loops over each of the friends, displaying the latest checkins for each one:

this.props.stitchClient
  .executePipeline([
    builtins.namedPipeline('friendsCheckins', {number: 10})])
  .then(
    friendData => {
      this.setState({friendsCheckins: 
        friendData.result[0].map((friend, friendIndex) =>
          <li key={friendIndex}>
            <strong>{friend._id}</strong>
            <ul>
              {friend.checkins.map((checkin) =>
                <li>
                  <a href={checkin.url} target="_Blank"> {checkin.venueName}</a>
                     ( {checkin.date} ) <br/>
                    <img src={checkin.locationImg} className="mapImg" 
                      alt={"map of " + checkin.venueName}/>
                </li>
              )}
            </ul>
          </li>
        )
      })
    },
    error => {
      console.log("Failed to fetch friends' data: " + error)
  })

Continue accessing your data from existing applications (Amazon Alexa skill)

Not every MongoDB Stitch use-case involves building a greenfield app on top of a brand new data set. It’s common that you already have a critical application, storing data in MongoDB, and you want to safely allow new apps or features to use some of that same data.

The good news is that your existing application can continue without any changes, and Stitch can be added to control access from any new applications. To illustrate this, you can reuse the Mongo Alexa Skill created in my earlier post. The JavaScript code needs a sight adjustment (due to a change I made to the schema) – use alexa/index.js.

Architecture for Amazon Alexa reading data from MongoDB Atlas

Architecture for Amazon Alexa reading data from MongoDB Atlas

The Alexa skill uses the Express/Node.js REST API implemented in The Modern Application Stack – Part 3: Building a REST API Using Express.js.

Conclusion

MongoDB Stitch lets you focus on building applications rather than on managing data manipulation code, service integration, or backend infrastructure. Whether you’re just starting up and want a fully managed backend as a service, or you’re part of an enterprise and want to expose existing MongoDB data to new applications, Stitch lets you focus on building the app users want, not on writing boilerplate backend logic.

In this post, you’ve learned how to:

  • Create a new MongoDB Stitch app that lets you access data stored in MongoDB Atlas
  • Integrate with authentication providers such as Google and Facebook
  • Configure data access controls – ensuring that application end-users can access just the information they’re entitled to
  • Enable access to the Slack, and Twilio services
  • Define constants/values that you can use securely within your application backend, without exposing them to your frontend code, or the outside world
  • Implement named pipelines to access MongoDB and your other services
  • Implement WebHooks that allow external services to trigger events in your application
  • Invoke your new WebHooks from other applications
  • Implement your application frontend in React/JavaScript
    • Authenticate users using Google and Facebook
    • Use the MongoDB Query Language to “directly” access your data through Stitch
    • Execute names pipelines
    • Create and run new pipelines on the fly
  • Continue to access the same MongoDB data from existing apps, using the MongoDB drivers

When revisiting the original blog series, it’s interesting to assess what work could you could save:

The following table summarizes the steps required to build an application without without the help of Stitch:

Development steps skipped when using MongoDB Stitch

Development steps skipped when using MongoDB Stitch

Both MongoDB Atlas and MongoDB Stitch.





The Modern Application Stack – Part 6: Browsers Aren’t the Only UI – Mobile Apps, Amazon Alexa, Cloud Services

This is the sixth and final blog post in a series examining technologies such as MongoDB and REST APIs that are driving the development of modern web and mobile applications.

Modern Application Stack – Part 1: Introducing The MEAN Stack introduced the technologies making up the MEAN (MongoDB, Express, Angular, Node.js) and MERN (MongoDB, Express, React, Node.js) stacks: why you might want to use them, and how to combine them to build your web application (or your native mobile or desktop app).

Subsequent posts focused on working through the end to end steps of building a real (albeit simple) application – MongoPop.

Part 2: Using MongoDB With Node.js created an environment where we could work with a MongoDB database from Node.js; it also created a simplified interface to the MongoDB Node.js Driver.

Part 3: Building a REST API with Express.js built on Part 2 by using Express.js to add a REST API which is used by the clients that we implement in the final 3 posts.

Part 4: Building a Client UI Using Angular 2 (formerly AngularJS) & TypeScript completed the MEAN stack by adding an Angular 2 client.

Part 5: Using ReactJS, ES6 & JSX to Build a UI (the rise of MERN) does the same but replaces Angular with ReactJS to complete the MERN stack.

Once your application back-end exposes a REST API, there are limitless ways that you or other developers can access it:

  • A dedicated browser-based client, as seen in posts 4 and 5
  • A standalone native iOS or Android mobile app
  • Voice controlled appliances, such as Amazon’s Echo
  • IoT-enabled devices, such as remote sensors
  • Integrations with 3rd party applications

This post takes a look at some of these approaches. Unlike some of the earlier posts, this one aims to go wide rather than deep – touching on many technologies rather than diving too deeply into any one.

Prerequisite – the REST API

Everything that follows assumes that you have the Mongopop REST API running – if not, skip back to Part 3: Building a REST API with Express.js. Additionally, that API has been extended with 3 new routes (already included in the latest GitHub repository):

Additional Express routes implemented for the Mongopop REST API
Route HTTP Method Parameters Response Purpose

                      
/pop/checkIn
POST
{       
    venue: string,
    date: string,
    url: string,
    location: string
}
        
{
    success: boolean,
    error: string
}
        
Stores the checkin data as a document in a collection.
/pop/checkInCount
GET
{
    success: boolean,
    count: number,
    error: string
}
        
Returns a count for the total number of checkins.
/pop/latestCheckIn
GET
{
    success: boolean,
    venue: string,
    date: string,
    url: string,
    location: string,
    error: string
}
        
Retrieves the most recent checkin.

These route paths are implemented in the pop.js module in the Mongopop repository:

/pop/lastCheckIn depends on a new method that has been added to javascripts/db.js:

The configuration file config.js is also extended – note that you should replace the value associated with the makerMongoDBURI field if you’re not running MongoDB on your local machine (e.g. with the URI provided by MongoDB Atlas:

The implementation of these methods follows the same pattern as already seen – refer back to Part 3 for details – and so is not explained here.

Repurposing Angular & ReactJS code for native applications

There are frameworks for both Angular and ReactJS that enable web client application designs (and in some cases, code) to be reused for creating native iOS and Android apps.

One option for Angular is NativeScript, in which you use Typescript/JavaScript with Angular to build native apps for multiple platforms from the same source code. Of course, to get the most out of those platforms, you may want or need to add platform-specific code.

React developers will find React Native code very familiar, and applications are built from declarative components in the same way. The most obvious difference is that React Native code uses its own native components (e.g. <View> and <Text> rather that HTML elements such as <div> and <p>):

React Native provides the Fetch API to make network requests; it follows a similar patter to XMLHttpRequest (React Native also includes XMLHttpRequest which can be used directly).

While it’s not as simple as just rebuilding your ReactJS or Angular code to produce native apps, the reuse of designs, skills and (some) code make it much more efficient than starting from scratch.

Combining cloud services – IFTTT

IFTTT (IF This Then That) is a free cloud service which allows you to automate tasks by combining existing services (Google Docs, Facebook, Instagram, Hue lights, Nest thermostats, GitHub, Trello, Dropbox,…). The name of the service comes from the simple pattern used for each Applet (automation rule): “IF This event occurs in service x Then trigger That action in service y”.

IFTTT includes a Maker service which can handle web requests (triggers) or send web requests (actions). In this case, I use it to invoke the pop/checkIn POST method from the Mongopop REST API whenever I check in using the Swarm (Foursquare) app:

Create Foursquare applet to make HTTP POST over REST API in IFTTT

Create Foursquare applet to make HTTP POST over REST API in IFTTT

Note that the applet makes a POST request to the http://your-mongopop-ip:3000/pop/checkIn route. The body of the POST includes the required parameters – provided as a JSON document. Each of the VenueName, CheckinDate, VenueUrl, and VenueMapImageURL values are /ingredients/ from the trigger (Foursquare) event.

IFTTT Stack - making REST calls

IFTTT Stack – making REST calls

Using the Swarm app I check into FourSquare:

We can confirm that the MongoDB collection has been updated after this check-in:

Cluster0-shard-0:PRIMARY> use maker
switched to db maker

Cluster0-shard-0:PRIMARY> db.foursq.find().sort({_id: -1}).limit(1).pretty()
{
    "_id" : ObjectId("58c272f842067a03283be544"),
    "venueName" : "Redroofs Theatre School",
    "date" : "March 10, 2017 at 09:23AM",
    "url" : "http://4sq.com/htwamV",
    "mapRef" : "http://maps.google.com/maps/api/staticmap?center=51.52212258991317,-0.7358344376428089&zoom=16&size=710x440&maptype=roadmap&sensor=false&markers=color:red%7C51.52212258991317,-0.7358344376428089"
}

Constructing an iOS/Apple Watch App to automate workflows

The first example showed how to record a check-in into our own service as a side effect of checking into an existing service (Foursquare).

What if we wanted to create new, independent check-ins, from a mobile device? What if we also wanted to augment the check-ins with additional data? Another requirement could be to let our team know of the check-in through a Slack channel.

A valid approach would be to build a new mobile client using React Native or NativeScript. Slack and Google Maps have their own REST APIs and so the new App could certainly integrate with them in addition to our Mongopop API. Before investing in that development work, it would be great to prototype the concept and see if it proves useful.

This is where we turn to the iOS Workflow app. Workflow has a number of similarities to IFTTT but there are also some significant differences:

  • Workflow runs on your iOS device rather than in the cloud.
  • Workflows are triggered by events on your iOS device (e.g. pressing a button) rather than an event in some cloud service.
  • Workflow allows much more complex patterns than “IF This event occurs in service A Then trigger That action in service B”; it can loop, invoke multiple services, perform calculations, access local resources (e.g. camera and location information) on your device, and much more.

Both applications/Workflows that we build here can be run on an iPad, iPhone, or Apple Watch.

The first Workflow, CheckIn, performs these steps:

  • Fetch the device’s current location
  • Retrieve any URL associated with that location
    • If none exists, fetch a map URL from Apple Maps
  • Fetch a Google Street View image for the location
    • Upload this image to Imgur
    • Send the image URL to Slack
  • Send a POST request to the /pop/checkIn Mongopop route
    • The request includes the location, date/time, URL (either from the venue or Apple Maps), and the StreetView image
  • Post the location and URL to Slack
  • Display error messages if anything fails
iOS Workflow stack to make REST API calls

iOS Workflow stack to make REST API calls

Implementing a Workflow involves dragging actions into the work area and then adding attributes to those actions (such as the address of the Mongopop API). The result of one action is automatically used as the input to the next action in the workflow. Results can also be stored in variables for use by later actions.

This is the Check In workflow:

iOS Workflow check-in code for REST API call

iOS Workflow check-in code for REST API call

This video demonstrates the use of the app when run on an iPhone:

The same app/workflow can be run from an Apple Watch:

Check-in via REST API with Apple Watch and iOS Workflow app

Check-in via REST API with Apple Watch and iOS Workflow app

We can confirm that check-in record has been stored as a document in MongoDB Atlas (note that the database and collection names are defined in config.js):

Cluster0-shard-0:PRIMARY> use maker
switched to db maker
Cluster0-shard-0:PRIMARY> db.foursq.find().sort({_id: -1}).limit(1).pretty()
{
    "_id" : ObjectId("58c1505742067a03283be541"),
    "venueName" : "77-79 King St, Maidenhead SL6 1DU, UK",
    "date" : "9 Mar 2017, 12:53",
    "url" : "http://maps.apple.com/?q=77-79%20King%20St,%20Maidenhead%20SL6%201DU,%20UK&ll=51.520409,-0.722196",
    "mapRef" : "http://i.imgur.com/w3KyIVU.jpg"
}

The second app/workflow retrieves and displays details of the most recent check-in. It performs these steps:

  • Read from the /pop/latestCheckIn Mongopop REST API Route using GET.
  • If the results indicate a successful operation then:
    • Extract the location from the results
    • Display the location and prompt the user if they’d like to:
      • See the location data (image)
      • Follow the location’s URL (typically an Apple Maps link)
      • Finish
  • If the Mongopop operation fails, display an appropriate error.

The full workflow is shown here:

Find the latest check-in using REST API using Apple Watch

Find the latest check-in using REST API using Apple Watch

Running the app on an iPad produces these results:

Again, the same app can be run from an Apple Watch:

Find the latest check-in using REST API from Apple Watch

Find the latest check-in using REST API from Apple Watch

Hands-free – Amazon Alexa Skills

Two of today’s biggest industry trends are machine learning and serverless computing. Amazon’s Alexa service (typically accessed through Amazon’s Echo device) is at the forefront of both. In addition to interpreting voice commands for Amazon’s own services (e.g. ordering more coffee beans or playing a particular song), developers can implement their own skills. Many are publicly available from 3rd parties such as Nest, Harmony, and Spotify, but you’re free to implement and test your own – submitting it for review and public use when ready.

The business logic behind Alexa skills are typically run within Amazon’s serverless computing service – AWS Lambda. Lambda is a great product for services that handle low or bursty levels of traffic – rather than paying a flat rate for a physical or virtual server, you pay a small fee for every event handled (and you even get a low-medium level of throughput for free). If your service really takes off then Lambda automatically scales out.

Assuming that you decide to use Lambda, there are three main components to your skill:

  • The set of intents – instructions that a user can give to Alexa
  • For each intent, a set of utterances that the user might say in order to signal that intent
  • The actual logic which is invoked whenever the user signals an intent – implemented as a Lambda function

The Mongo Alexa skill has 3 intents/commands:

  • WhereIntent: Find the most recent location that I checked in to
  • CountIntent: Count how many times I’ve checked in
  • HelpIntent: Explain what the available commands/intents are

The intents are defined as a JSON document:

{"intents": [
    {"intent": "WhereIntent"},
    {"intent": "CountIntent"},
    {"intent": "AMAZON.HelpIntent"},
  ]
}

The utterances for each of those intents must also be defined:

WhereIntent where is andrew
WhereIntent where is he
WhereIntent where am i
WhereIntent where did he last check in
WhereIntent where did Andrew last check in
WhereIntent where did i last check in
WhereIntent last check in

CountIntent how many checkins
CountIntent how many times have I checked in
CountIntent how many times has Andrew checked in
CountIntent how many times has he checked in
CountIntent how many check ins
CountIntent check in count

Note that no utterances need to be added for the AMAZON.HelpIntent as that intent is built in.

The skill is created in the Amazon Developer Console using the Alexa wizard; where the intentions and utterances can be added:

Add Alexa intentions and utterances

Add Alexa intentions and utterances

In the next screen, you indicate where the the skill’s business logic runs; in this case, I provide the Amazon Resource Name (ARN) of my Lambda function:

Locate Amazon Alexa's skill code

Locate Amazon Alexa’s skill code

The logic for the Mongo skill is implemented in the index.js file (part of the MongoDB-Alexa GitHub repository):

As explained earlier, the aim of this post is to cover a broad set of technologies rather than going too deeply into any one but explaining a few concepts may help you understand what this code is doing:

  • A handler is implemented for each of the intents; that handler is invoked when the user speaks one of the utterances associated with that intent
  • The handlers for the CountIntent and WhereIntent makes calls to the Mongopop REST API using the request function
  • The emit method is how the handlers can send results or errors back to the user (via Alexa)
  • The card, referred to by tellWithCard, is visual content (text and images) that are displayed in the Alexa app

Note that this is a simple skill which receives a request and sends a single response. It is also possible to implement an interactive state machine where there’s a conversation between the user and Alexa – in those skills, the logic uses both the latest intent and the past context in deciding how to respond. Note that the Lambda function is always stateless and so all data should be stored in a database such as MongoDB.

The skill is deployed to AWS Lambda through the AWS Management Console. The index.js, config.js and node_modules directory (created by running npm install) should be archived into a single Zip file which is then uploaded to AWS:

Create zip file for Alexa skill to upload to AWS Lambda

Create zip file for Alexa skill to upload to AWS Lambda

Upload zip file for Alexa skill to AWS Lambda

Upload zip file for Alexa skill to AWS Lambda

There are a number of extra configuration options – such as the runtime environment to use (Node.js), the user role, the amount of memory to be made available to the function, and how long each invocation of the function should be allowed to run (the function is making external HTTP requests and so it may need a few seconds):

Configure AWS Lambda function for Amazon Alexa skill

Configure AWS Lambda function for Amazon Alexa skill

As a reminder, the user speaks to the Amazon Echo device, then the Alexa application invokes an AWS Lambda function, which implements the business logic for the Mongo skill, which then interacts with the MongoDB database via the Mongopop REST API:

Stack to have Alexa make REST API calls to Mongopop

Stack to have Alexa make REST API calls to Mongopop

To start, test the simplest intent – asking the Mongo skill for help:

Note that the visual card can contain more information than Alexa’s spoken response. For example, if there is an error in the Mongopop back-end, the returned error message is displayed on the card.

Next, we can ask Alexa how many times I’ve checked in and where my last check-in was. Note that I could have used any of the utterances associated with these intents (and Alexa will automatically convert similar phrases):

Summary

Previous posts stepped through building the Mongopop application back-end and then the creation of web client applications using Angular 2 and ReactJS.

This post explored some alternative ways to build client applications; in particular, it showed how to combine existing cloud services with a bit of new logic to create something brand new. We looked at a number of technologies to help build applications quickly and efficiently:

  • IFTTT: Make events in one cloud service trigger actions in another
  • Workflow: Automate complex tasks involving multiple services on an iOS device
  • Amazon Alexa: Implement your own voice-controlled skills
  • AWS Lambda: Host and scale your business logic in the cloud while only paying for the transactions you process

Increasingly, applications leverage multiple services (if only to allow the user to share their efforts on different social media networks). The key to all of these integrations is the REST APIs provided by each service. If you’ve jumped straight to this post then consider reading parts 1 through 3 to learn how to build your own REST API:

A simpler way to build your app – MongoDB Stitch, Backend as a Service

MongoDB Stitch is a backend as a service (BaaS), giving developers a REST-like API to MongoDB, and composability with other services, backed by a robust system for configuring fine-grained data access controls. Stitch provides native SDKs for JavaScript, iOS, and Android.

Built-in integrations give your application frontend access to your favorite third party services: Twilio, AWS S3, Slack, Mailgun, PubNub, Google, and more. For ultimate flexibility, you can add custom integrations using MongoDB Stitch’s HTTP service.

MongoDB Stitch allows you to compose multi-stage pipelines that orchestrate data across multiple services; where each stage acts on the data before passing its results on to the next.

Unlike other BaaS offerings, MongoDB Stitch works with your existing as well as new MongoDB clusters, giving you access to the full power and scalability of the database. By defining appropriate data access rules, you can selectively expose your existing MongoDB data to other applications through MongoDB Stitch’s API.

If you’d like to try it out, step through building an application with MongoDB Stitch.





The Modern Application Stack – Part 4: Building a Client UI Using Angular 2 (formerly AngularJS) & TypeScript

Introduction

This is the fourth in a series of blog posts examining technologies such as Angular that are driving the development of modern web and mobile applications.

“Modern Application Stack – Part 1: Introducing The MEAN Stack” introduced the technologies making up the MEAN (MongoDB, Express, Angular, Node.js) and MERN (MongoDB, Express, React, Node.js) Stacks, why you might want to use them, and how to combine them to build your web application (or your native mobile or desktop app).

The remainder of the series is focussed on working through the end to end steps of building a real (albeit simple) application. – MongoPop. Part 2: Using MongoDB With Node.js created an environment where we could work with a MongoDB database from Node.js; it also created a simplified interface to the MongoDB Node.js Driver. Part 3: Building a REST API with Express.js built on Part 2 by using Express.js to add a REST API which will be used by the clients that we implement in the final posts.

This post demonstrates how to use Angular 2 (the evolution of Angular.js) to implement a remote web-app client for the Mongopop application.

Angular 2 (recap)

Angular, originally created and maintained by Google, runs your JavaScript code within the user’s web browsers to implement a reactive user interface (UI). A reactive UI gives the user immediate feedback as they give their input (in contrast to static web forms where you enter all of your data, hit “Submit” and wait.

Reactive Angular 2 application

Version 1 of Angular was called AngularJS but it was shortened to Angular in Angular 2 after it was completely rewritten in Typescript (a superset of JavaScript) – Typescript is now also the recommended language for Angular apps to use.

You implement your application front-end as a set of components – each of which consists of your JavaScript (Typescript) code and an HTML template that includes hooks to execute and use the results from your Typescript functions. Complex application front-ends can be crafted from many simple (optionally nested) components.

Angular application code can also be executed on the back-end server rather than in a browser, or as a native desktop or mobile application.

MEAN Stack Architecture

Downloading, running, and using the Mongopop application

The Angular client code is included as part if the Mongopop package installed in Part 2: Using MongoDB With Node.js.

The back-end application should be run in the same way as in parts 2 & 3. The client software needs to be transpiled from Typescript to JavaScript – the client software running in a remote browser can then download the JavaScript files and execute them.

The existing package.json file includes a script for transpiling the Angular 2 code:

  "scripts": {
        ...
    "tsc:w": "cd public && npm run tsc:w",
        ...  
},

That tsc:w delegates the work to a script of the same name defined in public/package.json;

  "scripts": {
        ...
    "tsc:w": "tsc -w",
        ...  
},

tsc -w continually monitors the client app’s Typescript files and reruns the transpilation every time they are edited.

To start the continual transpilation of the Angular 2 code:

npm run rsc:w

Component architecture of the Mongopop Angular UI

Angular applications (both AngularJS and Angular2) are built from one or more, nested components – Mongopop is no exception:

Mongopop Angular2 Components

The main component (AppComponent)contains the HTML and logic for connecting to the database and orchestrating its sub-components. Part of the definition of AppComponent is meta data/decoration to indicate that it should be loaded at the point that a my-app element (<my-app></my-app>) appears in the index.html file (once the component is running, its output replaces whatever holding content sits between <my-app> and </my-app>). AppComponent is implemented by:

  • A Typescript file containing the AppComponent class (including the data members, initialization code, and member functions
  • A HTML file containing
    • HTML layout
    • Rendering of data members
    • Elements to be populated by sub-components
    • Data members to be passed down for use by sub-components
    • Logic (e.g. what to do when the user changes the value in a form)
  • (Optionally) a CSS file to customise the appearance of the rendered content

Mongopop is a reasonably flat application with only one layer of sub-components below AppComponent, but more complex applications may nest deeper.

Changes to a data value by a parent component will automatically be propagated to a child – it’s best practice to have data flow in this direction as much as possible. If a data value is changed by a child and the parent (either directly or as a proxy for one of its other child components) needs to know of the change, then the child triggers an event. That event is processed by a handler registered by the parent – the parent may then explicitly act on the change, but even if it does nothing explicit, the change flows to the other child components.

This table details what data is passed from AppComponent down to each of its children and what data change events are sent back up to AppComponent (and from there, back down to the other children):

Flow of data between Angular components
Child component Data passed down Data changes passed back up
AddComponent
Data service Collection name
Collection name
Mockaroo URL
CountComponent
Data service Collection name
Collection name
UpdateComponent
Data service Collection name
Collection name
SampleComponent
Data service Collection name
Collection name

What are all of these files?

To recap, the files and folders covered earlier in this series:

  • package.json: Instructs the Node.js package manager (npm) what it needs to do; including which dependency packages should be installed
  • node_modues: Directory where npm will install packages
  • node_modues/mongodb: The MongoDB driver for Node.js
  • node_modues/mongodb-core: Low-level MongoDB driver library; available for framework developers (application developers should avoid using it directly)
  • javascripts/db.js: A JavaScript module we’ve created for use by our Node.js apps (in this series, it will be Express) to access MongoDB; this module in turn uses the MongoDB Node.js driver.
  • config.js: Contains the application–specific configuration options
  • bin/www: The script that starts an Express application; this is invoked by the npm start script within the package.json file. Starts the HTTP server, pointing it to the app module in app.js
  • app.js: Defines the main back-end application module (app). Configures:
    • That the application will be run by Express
    • Which routes there will be & where they are located in the file system (routes directory)
    • What view engine to use (Jade in this case)
    • Where to find the views to be used by the view engine (views directory)
    • What middleware to use (e.g. to parse the JSON received in requests)
    • Where the static files (which can be read by the remote client) are located (public directory)
    • Error handler for queries sent to an undefined route
  • views: Directory containing the templates that will be used by the Jade view engine to create the HTML for any pages generated by the Express application (for this application, this is just the error page that’s used in cases such as mistyped routes (“404 Page not found”))
  • routes: Directory containing one JavaScript file for each Express route
    • routes/pop.js: Contains the Express application for the /pop route; this is the implementation of the Mongopop REST API. This defines methods for all of the supported route paths.
  • public: Contains all of the static files that must be accessible by a remote client (e.g., our Angular to React apps).

Now for the new files that implement the Angular client (note that because it must be downloaded by a remote browser, it is stored under the public folder):

  • public/package.json: Instructs the Node.js package manager (npm) what it needs to do; including which dependency packages should be installed (i.e. the same as /package.json but this is for the Angular client app)
  • public/index.html: Entry point for the application; served up when browsing to http://<backend-server>/. Imports public/system.config.js
  • public/system.config.js: Configuration information for the Angular client app; in particular defining the remainder of the directories and files:
    • public/app: Source files for the client application – including the Typescript files (and the transpiled JavaScript files) together the HTML and any custom CSS files. Combined, these define the Angular components.
      • public/app/main.ts: Entry point for the Angular app. Bootstraps public/app/app.module.ts
      • public/app/app.module.ts: Imports required modules, declares the application components and any services. Declares which component to bootstrap (AppComponent which is implemented in public/app/app.component.*)
      • public/app/app.component.html: HTML template for the top-level component. Includes elements that are replaced by sub-components
      • public/app/app.component.ts: Implements the AppComponent class for the top-level component
      • public/app/X.component.html: HTML template for sub-component X
      • public/app/X.component.ts: Implements the class for sub-component X
      • AddDocsRequest.ts, ClientConfig.ts, CountDocsRequest.ts, MongoResult.ts, MongoReadResult.ts, SampleDocsRequest.ts, & UpdateDocsRequest.ts: Classes that match the request parameters and response formats of the REST API that’s used to access the back-end
      • data.service.ts: Service used to access the back-end REST API (mostly used to access the database)
      • X.js* & *X.js.map: Files which are generated by the transpilation of the Typescript files.
    • public/node-modules: Node.js modules used by the Angular app (as opposed to the Express, server-side Node.js modules)
    • public/styles.css: CSS style sheet (imported by public/index.html) – applies to all content in the home page, not just content added by the components
    • public/stylesheets/styles.css: CSS style sheet (imported by public/app/app.component.ts and the other components) – note that each component could have their own, specialized style sheet instead

“Boilerplate” files and how they get invoked

This is an imposing number of new files and this is one of the reasons that Angular is often viewed as the more complex layer in the application stack. One of the frustrations for many developers, is the number of files that need to be created and edited on the client side before your first line of component/application code is executed. The good news is that there is a consistent pattern and so it’s reasonable to fork you app from an existing project – the Mongopop app can be cloned from GitHub or, the Angular QuickStart can be used as your starting point.

As a reminder, here is the relationship between these common files (and our application-specific components):

Angular2 boilerplate files

Contents of the “boilerplate” files

This section includes the contents for each of the non-component files and then remarks on some of the key points.

public/package.json

The scripts section defines what npm should do when you type npm run <command-name> from the command line. Of most interest is the tsc:w script – this is how the transpiler is launched. After transpiling all of the .ts Typescript files, it watches them for changes – retranspiling as needed.

Note that the dependencies are for this Angular client. They will be installed in public/node_modules when npm install is run (for Mongopop, this is done automatically when building the full project ).

public/index.html

Focussing on the key lines, the application is started using the app defined in systemjs.config.js:

And the output from the application replaces the placeholder text in the my-app element:

<my-app>Loading MongoPop client app...</my-app>

public/systemjs.config.js

packages.app.main is mapped to public/app/main.js – note that main.js is referenced rather than main.ts as it is always the transpiled code that is executed. This is what causes main.ts to be run.

public/app/main.ts

This simply imports and bootstraps the AppModule class from public/app/app.module.ts (actually app.module.js)

public/app/app.module.ts

This is the first file to actually reference the components which make up the Mongopop application!

Note that NgModule is the core module for Angular and must always be imported; for this application BrowserModule, HttpModule, and FormsModule are also needed.

The import commands also bring in the (.js) files for each of the components as well as the data service.

Following the imports, the @NgModule decorator function takes a JSON object that tells Angular how to run the code for this module (AppModule) – including the list of imported modules, components, and services as well as the module/component needed to bootstrap the actual application (AppComponent).

Typescript & Observables (before getting into component code)

As a reminder from Part 1: Introducing The MEAN Stack (and the young MERN upstart); the most recent, widely supported version is ECMAScript 6 – normally referred to as /ES6/. ES6 is supported by recent versions of Chrome, Opera, Safari, and Node.js). Some platforms (e.g. Firefox and Microsoft Edge) do not yet support all features of ES6. These are some of the key features added in ES6:

  • Classes & modules
  • Promises – a more convenient way to handle completion or failure of synchronous function calls (compared to callbacks)
  • Arrow functions – a concise syntax for writing function expressions
  • Generators – functions that can yield to allow others to execute
  • Iterators
  • Typed arrays

Typescript is a superset of ES6 (JavaScript); adding static type checking. Angular 2 is written in Typescript and Typescript is the primary language to be used when writing code to run in Angular 2.

Because ES6 and Typescript are not supported in all environments, it is common to transpile the code into an earlier version of JavaScript to make it more portable. tsc is used to transpile Typescript into JavaScript.

And of course, JavaScript is augmented by numerous libraries. The Mongopop Angular 2 client uses Observables from the RxJS reactive libraries which greatly simplify making asynchronous calls to the back-end (a pattern historically referred to as AJAX).

RxJS Observables fulfil a similar role to ES6 promises in that they simplify the code involved with asynchronous function calls (removing the need to explicitly pass callback functions). Promises are more contained than Observables, they make a call and later receive a single signal that the asynchronous activity triggered by the call succeeded or failed. Observables can have a more complex lifecycle, including the caller receiving multiple sets of results and the caller being able to cancel the Observable.

The Mongopop application uses two simple patterns when calling functions that return an Observable; the first is used within the components to digest the results from our own data service:

In Mongopop’s use of Observables, we don’t have anything to do in the final arrow function and so don’t use it (and so it could have used the second pattern instead – but it’s interesting to see both).

The second pattern is used within the data service when making calls to the Angular 2 http module (this example also shows how we return an Observable back to the components):

Calling the REST API

The DataService class hides the communication with the back-end REST API; serving two purposes:

  • Simplifying all of the components’ code
  • Shielding the components’ code from any changes in the REST API signature or behavior – that can all be handled within the DataService

By adding the @Injectable decorator to the class definition, any member variables defined in the arguments to the class constructor function will be automatically instantiated (i.e. there is no need to explicitly request a new Http object):

After the constructor has been called, methods within the class can safely make use of the http data member.

As a reminder from Part 3: Building a REST API with Express.js, this is the REST API we have to interact with:

Express routes implemented for the Mongopop REST API
Route Path HTTP Method Parameters Response Purpose

                      
/pop/
GET
{
"AppName": "MongoPop",
"Version": 1.0
}
        
Returns the version of the API.
/pop/ip
GET
{"ip": string}
Fetches the IP Address of the server running the Mongopop backend.
/pop/config
GET
{
mongodb: {
    defaultDatabase: string,
    defaultCollection: string,
    defaultUri: string
},
mockarooUrl: string
}
        
Fetches client-side defaults from the back-end config file.
/pop/addDocs
POST
{
MongoDBURI: string;
collectionName: string;
dataSource: string;
numberDocs: number;
unique: boolean;
}
        
{
success: boolean;
count: number;
error: string;
}
        
Add `numberDocs` batches of documents, using documents fetched from `dataSource`
/pop/sampleDocs
POST
{
MongoDBURI: string;
collectionName: string;
numberDocs: number;
}
        
{
success: boolean;   
documents: string;
error: string;
}
        
Read a sample of the documents from a collection.
/pop/countDocs
POST
{
MongoDBURI: string; 
collectionName: string;
}
        
{
success: boolean;   
count: number;
error: string;
}
        
Counts the number of documents in the collection.
/pop/updateDocs
POST
{
MongoDBURI: string;
collectionName: string;
matchPattern: Object;
dataChange: Object;
threads: number;
}
        
{
success: boolean;
count: number;
error: string;
}
        
Apply an update to all documents in a collection
which match a given pattern

Most of the methods follow a very similar pattern and so only a few are explained here; refer to the DataService class to review the remainder.

The simplest method retrieves a count of the documents for a given collection:

This method returns an Observable, which in turn delivers an object of type MongoResult. MongoResult is defined in MongoResult.ts:

The pop/count PUT method expects the request parameters to be in a specific format (see earlier table); to avoid coding errors, another Typescript class is used to ensure that the correct parameters are always included – CountDocsRequest:

http.post returns an Observable. If the Observable achieves a positive outcome then the map method is invoked to convert the resulting data (in this case, simply parsing the result from a JSON string into a Typescript/JavaScript object) before automatically passing that updated result through this method’s own returned Observable.

The timeout method causes an error if the HTTP request doesn’t succeed or fail within 6 minutes.

The catch method passes on any error from the HTTP request (or a generic error if error.toString() is null) if none exists.

The updateDBDocs method is a little more complex – before sending the request, it must first parse the user-provided strings representing:

  • The pattern identifying which documents should be updated
  • The change that should be applied to each of the matching documents

This helper function is used to parse the (hopefully) JSON string:

If the string is a valid JSON document then tryParseJSON returns an object representation of it; if not then it returns an error.

A new class (UpdateDocsRequest) is used for the update request:

updateDBDocs is the method that is invoked from the component code:

After converting the received string into objects, it delegates the actual sending of the HTTP request to sendUpdateDocs:

A simple component that accepts data from its parent

Recall that the application consists of five components: the top-level application which contains each of the add, count, update, and sample components.

When building a new application, you would typically start by designing the the top-level container and then work downwards. As the top-level container is the most complex one to understand, we’ll start at the bottom and then work up.

A simple sub-component to start with is the count component:

Mongopop Angular2 component
public/app/count.component.html defines the elements that define what’s rendered for this component:

You’ll recognise most of this as standard HTML code.

The first Angular extension is for the single input element, where the initial value (what’s displayed in the input box) is set to {{MongoDBCollectionName}}. Any name contained within a double pair of braces refers to a data member of the component’s class (public/app/count.component.ts).

When the button is clicked, countDocs (a method of the component’s class) is invoked with CountCollName.value (the current contents of the input field) passed as a parameter.

Below the button, the class data members of DocumentCount and CountDocError are displayed – nothing is actually rendered unless one of these has been given a non-empty value. Note that these are placed below the button in the code, but they would still display the resulting values if they were moved higher up – position within the HTML file doesn’t impact logic flow. Each of those messages is given a class so that they can be styled differently within the component’s CSS file:

Angular 2 success message

Angular 2 error message

The data and processing behind the component is defined in public/app/count.component.ts:

Starting with the @component decoration for the class:

This provides meta data for the component:

  • selector: The position of the component within the parent’s HTML should be defined by a <my-count></my-count> element.
  • templateUrl: The HMTL source file for the template (public/app/count.component.ts in this case – public is dropped as the path is relative)
  • styleUrls: The CSS file for this component – all components in this application reference the same file: public/stylesheets/style.css

The class definition declares that it implements the OnInit interface; this means that its ngOnInit() method will be called after the browser has loaded the component; it’s a good place to perform any initialization steps. In this component, it’s empty and could be removed.

The two data members used for displaying success/failure messages are initialized to empty strings:

this.DocumentCount = "";
this.CountDocError = "";

Recall that data is passed back and forth between the count component and its parent:

Flow of data between Angular components
Child component Data passed down Data changes pased back up
CountComponent
Data service Collection name
Collection name

To that end, two class members are inherited from the parent component – indicated by the @Input() decoration:

// Parameters sent down from the parent component (AppComponent)
@Input() dataService: DataService;
@Input() MongoDBCollectionName: string;

The first is an instance of the data service (which will be used to request the document count); the second is the collection name that we used in the component’s HTML code. Note that if either of these are changed in the parent component then the instance within this component will automatically be updated.

When the name of the collection is changed within this component, the change needs to be pushed back up to the parent component. This is achieved by declaring an event emitter (onCollection):

Recall that the HTML for this component invokes a member function: countDocs(CountCollName.value) when the button is clicked; that function is implemented in the component class:

After using the data service to request the document count, either the success or error messages are sent – depending on the success/failure of the requested operation. Note that there are two layers to the error checking:

  1. Was the network request successful? Errors such as a bad URL, out of service back-end, or loss of a network connection would cause this check to fail.
  2. Was the back-end application able to execute the request successfully? Errors such as a non-existent collection would cause this check to fail.

Note that when this.CountDocError or this.DocumentCount are written to, Angular will automatically render the new values in the browser.

Passing data down to a sub-component (and receiving changes back)

We’ve seen how CountComponent can accept data from its parent and so the next step is to look at that parent – AppComponent.

The HTML template app.component.html includes some of its own content, such as collecting database connection information, but most of it is delegation to other components. For example, this is the section that adds in CountComponent:

Angular will replace the <my-count></my-count> element with CountComponent; the extra code within that element passes data down to that sub-component. For passing data members down, the syntax is:

[name-of-data-member-in-child-component]="name-of-data-member-in-this-component"

As well as the two data members, a reference to the onCollection event handler is passed down (to allow CountComponent to propagate changes to the collection name back up to this component). The syntax for this is:

(name-of-event-emitter-in-child-component)="name-of-event-handler-in-this-component($event)"

As with the count component, the main app component has a Typescript class – defined in app.component.ts – in addition to the HTML file. The two items that must be passed down are the data service (so that the count component can make requests of the back-end) and the collection name – these are both members of the AppComponent class.

The dataService object is implicitly created and initialized because it is a parameter of the class’s constructor, and because the class is decorated with @Injectable:

MongoDBCollectionName is set during component initialization within the ngOnInit() method by using the data service to fetch the default client configuration information from the back-end:

Finally, when the collection name is changed in the count component, the event that it emits gets handled by the event handler called, onCollection, which uses the new value to update its own data member:

Conditionally including a component

It’s common that a certain component should only be included if a particular condition is met. Mongopop includes a feature to allow the user to apply a bulk change to a set of documents – selected using a pattern specified by the user. If they don’t know the typical document structure for the collection then it’s unlikely that they’ll make a sensible change. Mongopop forces them to first retrieve a sample of the documents before they’re given the option to make any changes.

The ngIf directive can be placed within the opening part of an element (in this case a <div>) to make that element conditional. This approach is used within app.component.html to only include the update component if the DataToPlayWith data member is TRUE:

Note that, as with the count component, if the update component is included then it’s passed the data service and collection name and that it also passes back changes to the collection name.

Angular includes other directives that can be used to control content; ngFor being a common one as it allows you to iterate through items such as arrays:

Returning to app.component.html, an extra handler (onSample) is passed down to the sample component:

sample.component.html is similar to the HTML code for the count component but there is an extra input for how many documents should be sampled from the collection:

On clicking the button, the collection name and sample size are passed to the sampleDocs method in sample.component.ts which (among other things) emits an event back to the AppComponent‘s event handler using the onSample event emitter:

Other code highlights

Returning to app.component.html; there is some content there in addition to the sub-components:

Most of this code is there to allow a full MongoDB URI/connection string to be built based on some user-provided attributes. Within the input elements, two event types (keyup & change) make immediate changes to other values (without the need for a page refresh or pressing a button):

Reactive Angular 2 Component

The actions attached to each of these events call methods from the AppComponent class to set the data members – for example the setDBName method (from app.component.ts):

In addition to setting the dBInputs.MongoDBDatabaseName value, it also invokes the data service method calculateMongoDBURI (taken from data.service.ts ):

This method is run by the handler associated with any data member that affects the MongoDB URI (base URI, database name, socket timeout, connection pool size, or password). Its purpose is to build a full URI which will then be used for accessing MongoDB; if the URI contains a password then a second form of the URI, MongoDBURIRedacted has the password replaced with **********.

It starts with a test as to whether the URI has been left to the default localhost:27017 – in which case it’s assumed that there’s no need for a username or password (obviously, this shouldn’t be used in production). If not, it assumes that the URI has been provided by the MongoDB Atlas GUI and applies these changes:

  • Change the database name from <DATATBASE> to the one chosen by the user.
  • Replace <PASSWORD> with the real password (and with ********** for the redacted URI).
  • Add the socket timeout parameter.
  • Add the connection pool size parameter.

Testing & debugging the Angular application

Now that the full MEAN stack application has been implemented, you can test it from within your browser:

Debugging the Angular 2 client is straightforward using the Google Chrome Developer Tools which are built into the Chrome browser. Despite the browser executing the transpiled JavaScript the Dev Tools allows you to browse and set breakpoints in your Typescript code:

Summary & what’s next in the series

Previous posts stepped through building the Mongopop application back-end. This post describes how to build a front-end client using Angular 2. At this point, we have a complete, working, MEAN stack application.

The coupling between the front and back-end is loose; the client simply makes remote, HTTP requests to the back-end service – using the interface created in Part 3: Building a REST API with Express.js.

This series will finish out by demonstrating alternate methods to implement front-ends; using ReactJS for another browser-based UI (completing the MERN stack) and then more alternative methods.

Continue following this blog series to step through building the remaining stages of the Mongopop application:

A simpler way to build your app – MongoDB Stitch, Backend as a Service

MongoDB Stitch is a backend as a service (BaaS), giving developers a REST-like API to MongoDB, and composability with other services, backed by a robust system for configuring fine-grained data access controls. Stitch provides native SDKs for JavaScript, iOS, and Android.

Built-in integrations give your application frontend access to your favorite third party services: Twilio, AWS S3, Slack, Mailgun, PubNub, Google, and more. For ultimate flexibility, you can add custom integrations using MongoDB Stitch’s HTTP service.

MongoDB Stitch allows you to compose multi-stage pipelines that orchestrate data across multiple services; where each stage acts on the data before passing its results on to the next.

Unlike other BaaS offerings, MongoDB Stitch works with your existing as well as new MongoDB clusters, giving you access to the full power and scalability of the database. By defining appropriate data access rules, you can selectively expose your existing MongoDB data to other applications through MongoDB Stitch’s API.

If you’d like to try it out, step through building an application with MongoDB Stitch.





The Modern Application Stack – Part 3: Building a REST API Using Express.js

Introduction

This is the third in a series of blog posts examining the technologies that are driving the development of modern web and mobile applications.

Part 1: Introducing The MEAN Stack (and the young MERN upstart) introduced the technologies making up the MEAN (MongoDB, Express, Angular, Node.js) and MERN (MongoDB, Express, React, Node.js) Stacks, why you might want to use them, and how to combine them to build your web application (or your native mobile or desktop app).

The remainder of the series is focused on working through the end to end steps of building a real (albeit simple) application. – MongoPop. Part 2: Using MongoDB With Node.js created an environment where we could work with a MongoDB database from Node.js; it also created a simplified interface to the MongoDB Node.js Driver.

This post builds on from those first posts by using Express to build a REST API so that a remote client can work with MongoDB. You will be missing a lot of context if you have skipped those posts – it’s recommended to follow through those first.

The REST API

A Representational State Transfer (REST) interface provides a set of operations that can be invoked by a remote client (which could be another service) over a network, using the HTTP protocol. The client will typically provide parameters such as a string to search for or the name of a resource to be deleted.

Many services provide a REST API so that clients (their own and those of 3rd parties) and other services can use the service in a well defined, loosely coupled manner. As an example, the Google Places API can be used to search for information about a specific location:

Breaking down the URI used in that curl request:

  • No method is specified and so the curl command defaults to a HTTP GET.
  • maps.googleapis.com is the address of the Google APIs service.
  • /maps/api/place/details/json is the route path to the specific operation that’s being requested.
  • placeid=ChIJKxSwWSZgAUgR0tWM0zAkZBc is a parameter (passed to the function bound to this route path), identifying which place we want to read the data for.
  • key=AIzaSyC53qhhXAmPOsxc34WManoorp7SVN_Qezo is a parameter indicating the Google API key, verifying that it’s a registered application making the request (Google will also cap, or bill for, the number of requests made using this key).

There’s a convention as to which HTTP method should be used for which types of operation:

  • GET: Fetches data
  • POST: Adds new data
  • PUT: Updates data
  • DELETE: Removes data

Mongopop’s REST API breaks this convention and uses POST for some read requests (as it’s simpler passing arguments than with GET).

These are the REST operations that will be implemented in Express for Mongopop:

Express routes implemented for the Mongopop REST API
Route Path HTTP Method Parameters Response Purpose

                      
/pop/
GET
{
"AppName": "MongoPop",
"Version": 1.0
}
        
Returns the version of the API.
/pop/ip
GET
{"ip": string}
Fetches the IP Address of the server running the Mongopop backend.
/pop/config
GET
{
mongodb: {
    defaultDatabase: string,
    defaultCollection: string,
    defaultUri: string
},
mockarooUrl: string
}
        
Fetches client-side defaults from the back-end config file.
/pop/addDocs
POST
{
MongoDBURI: string;
collectionName: string;
dataSource: string;
numberDocs: number;
unique: boolean;
}
        
{
success: boolean;
count: number;
error: string;
}
        
Add `numberDocs` batches of documents, using documents fetched from `dataSource`
/pop/sampleDocs
POST
{
MongoDBURI: string;
collectionName: string;
numberDocs: number;
}
        
{
success: boolean;   
documents: string;
error: string;
}
        
Read a sample of the documents from a collection.
/pop/countDocs
POST
{
MongoDBURI: string; 
collectionName: string;
}
        
{
success: boolean;   
count: number;
error: string;
}
        
Counts the number of documents in the collection.
/pop/updateDocs
POST
{
MongoDBURI: string;
collectionName: string;
matchPattern: Object;
dataChange: Object;
threads: number;
}
        
{
success: boolean;
count: number;
error: string;
}
        
Apply an update to all documents in a collection
which match a given pattern

Express

Express is the web application framework that runs your back-end application (JavaScript) code. Express runs as a module within the Node.js environment.

Express can handle the routing of requests to the right functions within your application (or to different apps running in the same environment).

You can run the app’s full business logic within Express and even use an optional view engine to generate the final HTML to be rendered by the user’s browser. At the other extreme, Express can be used to simply provide a REST API – giving the front-end app access to the resources it needs e.g., the database.

The Mongopop application uses Express to perform two functions:

  • Send the front-end application code to the remote client when the user browses to our app
  • Provide a REST API that the front-end can access using HTTP network calls, in order to access the database

Downloading, running, and using the application

The application’s Express code is included as part of the Mongopop package installed in Part 2: Using MongoDB With Node.js.

What are all of these files?

A reminder of the files described in Part 2:

  • package.json: Instructs the Node.js package manager (npm) on what it needs to do; including which dependency packages should be installed
  • node_modues: Directory where npm will install packages
  • node_modues/mongodb: The MongoDB driver for Node.js
  • node_modues/mongodb-core: Low-level MongoDB driver library; available for framework developers (application developers should avoid using it directly)
  • javascripts/db.js: A JavaScript module we’ve created for use by our Node.js apps (in this series, it will be Express) to access MongoDB; this module in turn uses the MongoDB Node.js driver.

Other files and directories that are relevant to our Express application:

  • config.js: Contains the application–specific configuration options
  • bin/www: The script that starts an Express application; this is invoked by the npm start script within the package.json file. Starts the HTTP server, pointing it to the app module in app.js
  • app.js: Defines the main application module (app). Configures:
    • That the application will be run by Express
    • Which routes there will be & where they are located in the file system (routes directory)
    • What view engine to use (Jade in this case)
    • Where to find the /views/ to be used by the view engine (views directory)
    • What middleware to use (e.g. to parse the JSON received in requests)
    • Where the static files (which can be read by the remote client) are located (public directory)
    • Error handler for queries sent to an undefined route
  • views: Directory containing the templates that will be used by the Jade view engine to create the HTML for any pages generated by the Express application (for this application, this is just the error page that’s used in cases such as mistyped routes (“404 Page not found”))
  • routes: Directory containing one JavaScript file for each Express route
    • routes/pop.js: Contains the Express application for the /pop route; this is the implementation of the Mongopop REST API. This defines methods for all of the supported route paths.
  • public: Contains all of the static files that must be accessible by a remote client (e.g., our Angular to React apps). This is not used for the REST API and so can be ignored until Parts 4 and 5.

The rest of the files and directories can be ignored for now – they will be covered in later posts in this series.

Architecture

REST AIP implemented in Express.js

The new REST API (implemented in routes/pop.js) uses the javascripts/db.js database layer implemented in Part 2 to access the MongoDB database via the MongoDB Node.js Driver. As we don’t yet have either the Angular or React clients, we will user the curl command-line tool to manually test the REST API.

Code highlights

config.js

The config module can be imported by other parts of the application so that your preferences can be taken into account.

expressPort is used by bin/www to decide what port the web server should listen on; change this if that port is already in use.

client contains defaults to be used by the client (Angular or React). It’s important to create your own schema at Mockaroo.com and replace client.mockarooUrl with your custom URL (the one included here will fail if used too often).

bin/www

This is mostly boiler-plate code to start Express with your application. This code ensures that it is our application, app.js, that is run by the Express server:

This code uses the expressPort from config.js as the port for the server to listen on; it will be overruled if the user sets the PORT environment variable:

app.js

This file defines the app module ; much of the contents are boilerplate (and covered by comments in the code) but we look here at a few of the lines that are particular to this application.

Make this an Express application:

Define where the views (templates used by the Jade view engine to generate the HTML code) and static files (files that must be accessible by a remote client) are located:

Create the /pop route and associate it with the file containing its code (routes/pop.js):

routes/pop.js

This file implements each of the operations provided by the Mongopop REST API. Because of the the /pop route defined in app.js Express will direct any URL of the form http://<mongopop-server>:3000/pop/X here. Within this file a route handler is created in order direct incoming requests to http://<mongopop-server>:3000/pop/X to the appropriate function:

As the /pop route is only intended for the REST API, end users shouldn’t be browsing here but we create a top level handler for the GET method in case they do:

Results of browsing to the top-route for the Mongopop MongoDB application

This is the first time that we see how to send a response to a request; res.json(testObject); converts testObject into a JSON document and sends it back to the requesting client as part of the response message.

The simplest useful route path is for the GET method on /pop/ip which sends a response containing the IP address of the back-end server. This is useful to the Mongopop client as it means the user can see it and add it to the MongoDB Atlas whitelist. The code to determine and store publicIP is left out here but can be found in the full source file for pop.js.

Fetching the IP address for the MongoDB Mongopop back-end using REST API

We’ve seen that it’s possible to test GET methods from a browser’s address bar; that isn’t possible for POST methods and so it’s useful to be able to test using the curl command-line command:

The GET method for /pop/config is just as simple – responding with the client-specific configuration data:

The results of the request are still very simple but the output from curl is already starting to get messy; piping it through python -mjson.tool makes it easier to read:

The simplest operation that actually accesses the database is the POST method for the /pop/countDocs route path:

database is an instance of the object prototype defined in javascripts/db (see The Modern Application Stack – Part 2: Using MongoDB With Node.js) and so all this method needs to do is use that object to:

  • Connect to the database (using the address of the MongoDB server provided in the request body). The results from the promise returned by database.connect is passed to the function(s) in the first .then clause. Refer back to Part 2: Using MongoDB With Node.js if you need a recap on using promises.
  • The function in the .then clause handles the case where the database.connect promise is resolved (success). This function requests a count of the documents – the database connection information is now stored within the database object and so only the collection name needs to be passed. The promise returned by database.countDocuments is passed to the next .then clause. Note that there is no second (error) function provided, and so if the promise from database.connect is rejected, then that failure passes through to the next .then clause in the chain.
  • The second .then clause has two functions:
    • The first is invoked if and when the promise is resolved (success) and it returns a success response (which is automatically converted into a resolved promise that it passed to the final .then clause in the chain). count is the value returned when the promise from the call to database.countDocuments was resolved.
    • The second function handles the failure case (could be from either database.connect or database.countDocuments) by returning an error response object (which is converted to a resolved promise).
  • The final .then clause closes the database connection and then sends the HTTP response back to the client; the response is built by converting the resultObject (which could represent success or failure) to a JSON string.

Once more, curl can be used from the command-line to test this operation; as this is a POST request, the --data option is used to pass the JSON document to be included in the request:

curl can also be used to test the error paths. Cause the database connection to fail by using the wrong port number in the MongoDB URI:

Cause the count to fail by using the name of a non-existent collection:

The POST method for the pop/sampleDocs route path works in a very similar way:

Testing this new operation:

The POST method for pop/updateDocs is a little more complex as the caller can request multiple update operations be performed. The simplest way to process multiple asynchronous, promise-returning function calls in parallel is to build an array of the tasks and pass it to the Promise.all method which returns a promise that either resolves after all of the tasks have succeeded or is rejected if any of the tasks fail:

Testing with curl:

The final method uses example data from a service such as Mockaroo to populate a MongoDB collection. A helper function is created that makes the call to that external service:

That function is then used in the POST method for /pop/addDocs:

This method is longer than the previous ones – mostly because there are two paths:

  • In the first path, the client has requested that a fresh set of 1,000 example documents be used for each pass at adding a batch of documents. This path is much slower and will eat through your Mockaroo quota much faster.
  • In the second path, just one batch of 1,000 example documents is fetched from Mockaroo and then those same documents are repeatedly added. This path is faster but it results in duplicate documents (apart from a MongoDB-created _id field). This path cannot be used if the _id is part of the example documents generated by Mockaroo.

So far, we’ve used the Chrome browser and the curl command-line tool to test the REST API. A third approach is to use the Postman Chrome app:

Testing MongoDB Mongopop REST API with Postman Chrome app

Debugging Tips

One way to debug a Node.js application is to liberally sprinkle console.log messages throughout your code but that takes extra effort and bloats your code base. Every time you want to understand something new, you must add extra logging to your code and then restart your application.

Developers working with browser-side JavaScript benefit from the excellent tools built into modern browsers – for example, Google’s Chrome Developer Tools which let you:

  • Browse code (e.g. HTML and JavaScript)
  • Add breakpoints
  • View & alter contents of variables
  • View and modify css styles
  • View network messages
  • Access the console (view output and issue commands)
  • Check security details
  • Audit memory use, CPU, etc.

You open the Chrome DevTools within the Chrome browser using “View/Developer/Developer Tools”.

Fortunately, you can use the node-debug command of node-inspector to get a very similar experience for Node.js back-end applications. To install node-inspector:

node-inspector can be used to debug the Mongopop Express application by starting it with node-debug via the express-debug script in package.json:

To run the Mongopop REST API with node-debug, kill the Express app if it’s already running and then execute:

Note that this automatically adds a breakpoint at the start of the app and so you will need to skip over that to run the application.

Using Chrome Developer Tools with MongoDB Express Node.js application

Depending on your version of Node.js, you may see this error:

If you do, apply this patch to /usr/local/lib/node_modules/node-inspector/lib/InjectorClient.js.

Summary & what’s next in the series

Part 1: Introducing The MEAN Stack provided an overview of the technologies that are used by modern application developers – in particular, the MERN and MEAN stacks. Part 2: Using MongoDB With Node.js set up Node.js and the MongoDB Driver and then used them to build a new Node.js module to provide a simplified interface to the database.

This post built upon the first two of the series by stepping through how to implement a REST API using Express. We also looked at three different ways to test this API and how to debug Node.js applications. This REST API is required by both the Angular (Part 4) and React (Part 5) web app clients, as well as by the alternative UIs explored in Part 6.

The next part of this series implements the Angular client that makes use of the REST API – at the end of that post, you will understand the end-to-end steps required to implement an application using the MEAN stack.

Continue to follow this blog series to step through building the remaining stages of the MongoPop application:

A simpler way to build your app – MongoDB Stitch, Backend as a Service

MongoDB Stitch is a backend as a service (BaaS), giving developers a REST-like API to MongoDB, and composability with other services, backed by a robust system for configuring fine-grained data access controls. Stitch provides native SDKs for JavaScript, iOS, and Android.

Built-in integrations give your application frontend access to your favorite third party services: Twilio, AWS S3, Slack, Mailgun, PubNub, Google, and more. For ultimate flexibility, you can add custom integrations using MongoDB Stitch’s HTTP service.

MongoDB Stitch allows you to compose multi-stage pipelines that orchestrate data across multiple services; where each stage acts on the data before passing its results on to the next.

Unlike other BaaS offerings, MongoDB Stitch works with your existing as well as new MongoDB clusters, giving you access to the full power and scalability of the database. By defining appropriate data access rules, you can selectively expose your existing MongoDB data to other applications through MongoDB Stitch’s API.

If you’d like to try it out, step through building an application with MongoDB Stitch.





The Modern Application Stack – Part 1: Introducing The MEAN Stack

Introducing the MEAN and MERN stacks

This is the first in a series of blog posts examining the technologies that are driving the development of modern web and mobile applications, notably the MERN and MEAN stacks. The series will go on to step through tutorials to build all layers of an application.

Users increasingly demand a far richer experience from web sites – expecting the same level of performance and interactivity they get with native desktop and mobile apps. At the same time, there’s pressure on developers to deliver new applications faster and continually roll-out enhancements, while ensuring that the application is highly available and can be scaled appropriately when needed. Fortunately, there’s a (sometimes bewildering) set of enabling technologies that make all of this possible.

If there’s one thing that ties these technologies together, it’s JavaScript and its successors (ES6, TypeScript, JSX, etc.) together with the JSON data format. The days when the role of JavaScript was limited to adding visual effects like flashing headers or pop-up windows are past. Developers now use JavaScript to implement the front-end experience as well as the application logic and even to access the database. There are two dominant JavaScript web app stacks – MEAN (MongoDB, Express, Angular, Node.js) and MERN (MongoDB, Express, React, Node.js) and so we’ll use those as paths to guide us through the ever-expanding array of tools and frameworks.

This first post serves as a primer for many of these technologies. Subsequent posts in the series take a deep dive into specific topics – working through the end-to-end development of Mongopop – an application to populate a MongoDB database with realistic data and then perform other operations on that data.

The MEAN Stack

We’ll start with MEAN as it’s the more established stack but most of what’s covered here is applicable to MERN (swap Angular with React).

MEAN is a set of Open Source components that together, provide an end-to-end framework for building dynamic web applications; starting from top (code running in the browser) to the bottom (database). The stack is made up of:

  • Angular (formerly Angular.js, now also known as Angular 2): Front-end web app framework; runs your JavaScript code in the users browser, allowing your application UI to be dynamic
  • Express (sometimes referred to as Express.js): Back-end web application framework running on top of Node.js
  • Node.js : JavaScript runtime environment – lets you implement your application back-end in JavaScript
  • MongoDB : Document database – used by your back-end application to store its data as JSON (JavaScript Object Notation) documents

A common theme in the MEAN stack is JavaScript – every line of code you write can be in the same language. You even access the database using MongoDB’s native, Idiomatic JavaScript/Node.js driver. What do we mean by idiomatic? Using the driver feels natural to a JavaScript developer as all interaction is performed using familiar concepts such as JavaScript objects and asynchronous execution using either callback functions or promises (explained later). Here’s an example of inserting an array of 3 JavaScript objects:

myCollection.insertMany([
    {name: {first: "Andrew", last: "Morgan"},
    {name: {first: "Elvis"}, died: 1977},
    {name: {last: "Mainwaring", title: "Captain"}, born: 1885}
])
.then(
    function(results) {
        resolve(results.insertedCount);
    },
    function(err) {
        console.log("Failed to insert Docs: " + err.message);
        reject(err);
    }
)

Angular 2

Angular, originally created and maintained by Google, runs your JavaScript code within the user’s web browsers to implement a reactive user interface (UI). A reactive UI gives the user immediate feedback as they give their input (in contrast to static web forms where you enter all of your data, hit “Submit” and wait.

Reactive web application

Version 1 of Angular was called AngularJS but it was shortened to Angular in Angular 2 after it was completely rewritten in Typescript (a superset of JavaScript) – Typescript is now also the recommended language for Angular apps to use.

You implement your application front-end as a set of components – each of which consists of your JavaScript (TypeScript) code and an HTML template that includes hooks to execute and use the results from your TypeScript functions. Complex application front-ends can be crafted from many simple (optionally nested) components.

Angular application code can also be executed on the back-end server rather than in a browser, or as a native desktop or mobile application.

MEAN Stack architecture

Express

Express is the web application framework that runs your back-end application (JavaScript) code. Express runs as a module within the Node.js environment.

Express can handle the routing of requests to the right parts of your application (or to different apps running in the same environment).

You can run the app’s full business logic within Express and even generate the final HTML to be rendered by the user’s browser. At the other extreme, Express can be used to simply provide a REST API – giving the front-end app access to the resources it needs e.g., the database.

In this blog series, we will use Express to perform two functions:

  • Send the front-end application code to the remote browser when the user browses to our app
  • Provide a REST API that the front-end can access using HTTP network calls, in order to access the database

Node.js

Node.js is a JavaScript runtime environment that runs your back-end application (via Express).

Node.js is based on Google’s V8 JavaScript engine which is used in the Chrome browsers. It also includes a number of modules that provides features essential for implementing web applications – including networking protocols such as HTTP. Third party modules, including the MongoDB driver, can be installed, using the npm tool.

Node.js is an asynchronous, event-driven engine where the application makes a request and then continues working on other useful tasks rather than stalling while it waits for a response. On completion of the requested task, the application is informed of the results via a callback. This enables large numbers of operations to be performed in parallel which is essential when scaling applications. MongoDB was also designed to be used asynchronously and so it works well with Node.js applications.

MongoDB

MongoDB is an open-source, document database that provides persistence for your application data and is designed with both scalability and developer agility in mind. MongoDB bridges the gap between key-value stores, which are fast and scalable, and relational databases, which have rich functionality. Instead of storing data in rows and columns as one would with a relational database, MongoDB stores JSON documents in collections with dynamic schemas.

MongoDB’s document data model makes it easy for you to store and combine data of any structure, without giving up sophisticated validation rules, flexible data access, and rich indexing functionality. You can dynamically modify the schema without downtime – vital for rapidly evolving applications.

It can be scaled within and across geographically distributed data centers, providing high levels of availability and scalability. As your deployments grow, the database scales easily with no downtime, and without changing your application.

MongoDB Atlas is a database as a service for MongoDB, letting you focus on apps instead of ops. With MongoDB Atlas, you only pay for what you use with a convenient hourly billing model. With the click of a button, you can scale up and down when you need to, with no downtime, full security, and high performance.

Our application will access MongoDB via the JavaScript/Node.js driver which we install as a Node.js module.

What’s Done Where?

tl;dr – it’s flexible.

There is clear overlap between the features available in the technologies making up the MEAN stack and it’s important to decide “who does what”.

Perhaps the biggest decision is where the application’s “hard work” will be performed. Both Express and Angular include features to route to pages, run application code, etc. and either can be used to implement the business logic for sophisticated applications. The more traditional approach would be to do it in the back-end in Express. This has several advantages:

  • Likely to be closer to the database and other resources and so can minimise latency if lots of database calls are made
  • Sensitive data can be kept within this more secure environment
  • Application code is hidden from the user, protecting your intellectual property
  • Powerful servers can be used – increasing performance

However, there’s a growing trend to push more of the functionality to Angular running in the user’s browser. Reasons for this can include:

  • Use the processing power of your users’ machines; reducing the need for expensive resources to power your back-end. This provides a more scalable architecture, where every new user brings their own computing resources with them.
  • Better response times (assuming that there aren’t too many trips to the back-end to access the database or other resources)
  • Progressive Applications. Continue to provide (probably degraded) service when the client application cannot contact the back-end (e.g. when the user has no internet connection). Modern browsers allow the application to store data locally and then sync with the back-end when connectivity is restored.

Perhaps, a more surprising option for running part of the application logic is within the database. MongoDB has a sophisticated aggregation framework which can perform a lot of analytics – often more efficiently than in Express or Angular as all of the required data is local.

Another decision is where to validate any data that the user supplies. Ideally, this would be as close to the user as possible – using Angular to check that a provided password meets security rules allows for instantaneous feedback to the user. That doesn’t mean that there isn’t value in validating data in the back-end as well, and using MongoDB’s document validation functionality can guard against buggy software writing erroneous data.

ReactJS – Rise of the MERN Stack

MERN Stack architecture with React

An alternative to Angular is React (sometimes referred to as ReactJS), a JavaScript library developed by Facebook to build interactive/reactive user interfaces. Like Angular, React breaks the front-end application down into components. Each component can hold its own state and a parent can pass its state down to its child components and those components can pass changes back to the parent through the use of callback functions.

React components are typically implemented using JSX – an extension of JavaScript that allows HTML syntax to be embedded within the code:

class HelloMessage extends React.Component {
  render() {
    return <div>Hello {this.props.name}</div>;
  }
}

React is most commonly executed within the browser but it can also be run on the back-end server within Node.js, or as a mobile app using React Native.

So should you use Angular 2 or React for your new web application? A quick google search will find you some fairly deep comparisons of the two technologies but in summary, Angular 2 is a little more powerful while React is easier for developers to get up to speed with and use. This blog series will build a near-identical web app using first the MEAN and then the MERN stack – hopefully these posts will help you find a favorite.

The following snapshot from Google Trends suggests that Angular has been much more common for a number of years but that React is gaining ground:

Comparing React/ReactJS popularity vs. Angular and Angular 2

Why are these stacks important?

Having a standard application stack makes it much easier and faster to bring in new developers and get them up to speed as there’s a good chance that they’ve used the technology elsewhere. For those new to these technologies, there exist some great resources to get you up and running.

From MongoDB upwards, these technologies share a common aim – look after the critical but repetitive stuff in order to free up developers to work where they can really add value: building your killer app in record time.

These are the technologies that are revolutionising the web, building web-based services that look, feel, and perform just as well as native desktop or mobile applications.

The separation of layers, and especially the REST APIs, has led to the breaking down of application silos. Rather than an application being an isolated entity, it can now interact with multiple services through public APIs:

  1. Register and log into the application using my Twitter account
  2. Identify where I want to have dinner using Google Maps and Foursquare
  3. Order an Uber to get me there
  4. Have Hue turn my lights off and Nest turn my heating down
  5. Check in on Facebook

Variety & Constant Evolution

Even when constraining yourself to the JavaScript ecosystem, the ever-expanding array of frameworks, libraries, tools, and languages is both impressive and intimidating at the same time. The great thing is that if you’re looking for some middleware to perform a particular role, then the chances are good that someone has already built it – the hardest part is often figuring out which of the 5 competing technologies is the best fit for you.

To further complicate matters, it’s rare for the introduction of one technology not to drag in others for you to get up to speed on: Node.js brings in npm; Angular 2 brings in Typescript, which brings in tsc; React brings in ES6, which brings in Babel; ….

And of course, none of these technologies are standing still and new versions can require a lot of up-skilling to use – Angular 2 even moved to a different programming language!

The Evolution of JavaScript

The JavaScript language itself hasn’t been immune to change.

Ecma International was formed to standardise the language specification for JavaScript (and similar language forks) to increase portability – the ideal being that any “JavaScript” code can run in any browser or other JavaScript runtime environment.

The most recent, widely supported version is ECMAScript 6 – normally referred to as ES6. ES6 is supported by recent versions of Chrome, Opera, Safari, and Node.js). Some platforms (e.g. Firefox and Microsoft Edge) do not yet support all features of ES6. These are some of the key features added in ES6:

  • Classes & modules
  • Promises – a more convenient way to handle completion or failure of synchronous function calls (compared to callbacks)
  • Arrow functions – a concise syntax for writing function expressions
  • Generators – functions that can yield to allow others to execute
  • Iterators
  • Typed arrays

Typescript is a superset of ES6 (JavaScript); adding static type checking. Angular 2 is written in Typescript and Typescript is the primary language to be used when writing code to run in Angular 2.

Because ES6 and Typescript are not supported in all environments, it is common to transpile the code into an earlier version of JavaScript to make it more portable. In this series’ Angular post, tsc is used to transpile Typescript into JavaScript while the React post uses Babel (via react-script) to transpile our ES6 code.

And of course, JavaScript is augmented by numerous libraries. The Angular 2 post in this series uses Observables from the RxJS reactive libraries which greatly simplify making asynchronous calls to the back-end (a pattern historically referred to as AJAX).

Summary & What’s Next in the Series

This post has introduced some of the technologies used to build modern, reactive, web applications – most notably the MEAN and MERN stacks. If you want to learn exactly how to use these then please continue to follow this blog series which steps through building the MongoPop application:

As already covered in this post, the MERN and MEAN stacks are evolving rapidly and new JavaScript frameworks are being added all of the time. Inevitably, some of the details in this series will become dated but the concepts covered will remain relevant.

A simpler way to build your app – MongoDB Stitch, Backend as a Service

MongoDB Stitch is a backend as a service (BaaS), giving developers a REST-like API to MongoDB, and composability with other services, backed by a robust system for configuring fine-grained data access controls. Stitch provides native SDKs for JavaScript, iOS, and Android.

Built-in integrations give your application frontend access to your favorite third party services: Twilio, AWS S3, Slack, Mailgun, PubNub, Google, and more. For ultimate flexibility, you can add custom integrations using MongoDB Stitch’s HTTP service.

MongoDB Stitch allows you to compose multi-stage pipelines that orchestrate data across multiple services; where each stage acts on the data before passing its results on to the next.

Unlike other BaaS offerings, MongoDB Stitch works with your existing as well as new MongoDB clusters, giving you access to the full power and scalability of the database. By defining appropriate data access rules, you can selectively expose your existing MongoDB data to other applications through MongoDB Stitch’s API.

If you’d like to try it out, step through building an application with MongoDB Stitch.