Busy busy busy!
For the last few weeks, I’ve been really busy between my job and a personal project.
This personal project was really interesting as I discovered a awesome new project starter called MEAN.io
MEAN stands for MongoDB Express.js AngularJS Node.js
From these technologies I knew only AngularJS and what I can say is that it’s amazingly powerful! I would say MEAN represents a really easy and quick way to start and realize a small project. As it’s based on MongoDB, the NoSQL database might be too limited for really big projects but I would highly recommend it for small presentation websites or easy CRUD data management.
To get started quickly, first have a look at the official website: http://mean.io
You will need npm, Grunt, Bower and all these packages you should already have installed anyway if you are an angular user.
And then let’s get your mind blowed away:
First to setup all your app, execute this in your terminal:
> sudo npm install -g meanio@latest // Get the mean cmdline
> mean init myApp // create your first app
> cd myApp && npm install // Install dependencies
> grunt // Launch meanNote that you can also run node server instead of grunt.
After this have a look to the documentation and explore the folder called “articles” inside your “packages” one. It will give you an idea of a basic CRUD system. And then yes… it’s as easy as this!
I would say that the most complicated thing I faced on my small project was probably to use/get foreign keys with mongoose but that really well documented here.
Other good thing, maybe not for everybody, is that you will write only Javascript as all these technologies are using Javascript. You won’t put anymore ; in your python code when you just switch from Javascript front end! YAY!
Bonus point
Big bonus point for mean is that you can easily deploy your app on Heroku
Behind its complicated terms, Heroku is a powerful web host and you will be able to deploy your app online by using this magic command line:
git push heroku master
Yes, everything is as easy as this! and that’s the magic about the combo Mean+Heroku!
###Bonus point #2 I will post a new article soon about using Heroku for your devs/small projects but I was using a monitoring system on my app and noticed that before switching to MEAN, I was using a standard RoR app and my loading time was between 150/200ms. With MEAN it’s only between 80/150ms.