Since setting up the server is not a critical part of this book or this example app, you have two ways to do it:
Consume an existing REST API, which I have built.
Fork the server code, set up DB and run the server locally.
For option 1, you can check out the docs (https://ionic-book-store.herokuapp.com/) on readily available REST API end points and how to consume them.
For option 2, we will carry out the following operations:
Download and unzip the server code from: https://github.com/arvindr21. If you are familiar with Node.js, this is a typical Express application that has JWT added to it.
For the database, you can either use your local instance of MongoDB or you can get a free MongoLab (https://mongolab.com/) account and use it. Or you can use my MongoLab URL for this. Do note that other people are also using this URL; so kindly be sensible about it.
Once you have decided on the connection, you need to open server/db/connection.js and update the connection string on line...