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Best Tools For Building Your First MERN Application

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Mernstack

In this article, I will share with you my list of the top tools to use when building your first web application using the MERN stack

What is the MERN stack

The MERN stack stands for MongoDB, Express.js, React.js, Node.js which are tools you can use to make complete web applications. The main advantage of using this stack is using only one programming language which is JavaScript in the complete development cycle.

Global tools to use on all your app

  • Npm or Yarn which are tools to use to install the different packages of your web application
  • Node.js
  • Some code editor like Visual Studio Code to help you in

Tools to use on your Frontend stack

  • If you are building a single page application, you can use Create-react-app to generate your frontend code. If you are building a static website, you can try Gatsby.
  • For state management, you can use Redux
  • To perform unit testing and end to end testing on your code, you can use Jest and cypress
  • Vercel, Netlify or some similar hosting platform to deploy your frontend code

Tools to use on your Backend stack

  • Express to create your backend endpoints
  • Jest to perform testing on your backend code
  • An instance of MongoDB on your server
  • Mongoose to connect to your MongoDB instance from your backend code
  • A hosting service like Firebase or Heroku to deploy your backend code