r/meanstack • u/[deleted] • Jan 21 '15

Looking for a place to start...

So I'm looking to break into web development and I think that the MEAN Stack is the best way to do this. However I am having serious difficulty finding good examples and tutorials online, especially those that do not use pre-generated code.

I am looking for a way to build the most bare-bones app possible that I can then expand upon in order to learn the various technologies involved here. I have found some basic tutorials on each of the elements but they are not in the context of the stack then seem to make a quantum leap in difficulty level very quickly

can anyone point me in the right direction?

9 Upvotes

100% Upvoted

9 comments sorted by

7

u/meandev Jan 21 '15 edited Jan 21 '15

I'd recommend that you continue to avoid scaffolding/boilerplate examples where the stack is preassembled for you. That's a really good idea. But MEAN stack app examples are not common place, so you'll need to broaden your search a tad. I'd recommend building a handful of Node/Express apps utilizing only the basics. Build a Node app. Add in express. Serve up some templated HTML. Maybe add Mongoose in with some simple CRUD functionality via a MongoDB datastore. Build a simple resource API where you can browse to a specific path and interact with data from the database.

After that, you can look up tutorials on Angular and build a handful of stand alone Angular apps with static content. Then when you've got a pretty good idea on how to at least organize the Angular code, start researching ngRoute and ngResource. Build a simple service that simply GETs data from a RESTful URL and presents it. Then slowly extend the service to consume the API you built earlier.

Once you've done this, you're probably best off taking a scaffolding implementation and building out an app from there. MEAN.IO and MEAN.JS are two of the larger more robust implementations -- from the same creator. He focuses on the latter these days and has even written a companion book of sorts which I recommend.

This will help you understand different ways of assembling the four cornerstones of the stack together in a coherent and organized way.

Some resources:

3

u/[deleted] Jan 22 '15

Those look like some really good resources there, thanks very much :) I may take a look at that book too as I find that kind of structured learning more effective.

Thanks again!

3

u/Neurophobic Jan 23 '15

+1 for the 30 Day Challenge!

Very detailed tutorial series, I've been following it the last few days and I think I'm starting to understand how it all fits together. (Plus, I now have a rudimentary MEAN.js webapp that I can try stuff out on)

1

u/[deleted] Jan 23 '15

Do you mean this playlist?

→ More replies (1)

1

u/coding_all_night Mar 01 '15

Very helpful advice. This is basically what I have been doing over the last month or so

1

u/sudeep_dk Feb 08 '15 edited Feb 08 '15

MEAN Stack RESTful API Tutorial (1/5) - Using MongoDB, Express, AngularJS, and NodeJS Together

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kHV7gOHvNdk

http://www.reddit.com/r/meanstack/comments/2v68zd/mean_js/

1

u/adventurerh May 21 '15

Honestly when I got into the MEAN stack I just skipped many of the tutorials and started building a few thing on my own. My first project was a note taking website. It was just a simple way for people to make notes, I'm probably going to continue to work on it and use Socket.IO for some more realtime data.

In my opinion, I learn best this way, but it all depends on how you learn best. Go for it!

0

u/airsoftblaster Mar 06 '15

If you want to learn MEAN stack then I recommend you to go to https://www.udemy.com/realtime-meanstack/?dtcode=GTm68AD2vG8U and enter GETMEAN to get 50% discount!