Chapter 1, Unleashing React Applications with MERN, introduces the MERN stack technologies and the applications that will be developed in this book. We will discuss developing web applications with React, Node.js, Express, and MongoDB.
Chapter 2, Preparing the Development Environment, helps you to set up the MERN stack technologies for development. We will explore essential development tools; install Node.js, MongoDB, Express, React, and any other required libraries; and then run code to check the setup.
Chapter 3, Building a Backend with MongoDB, Express, and Node, implements the backend of a skeleton MERN application. We will build a standalone server-side application with MongoDB, Express, and Node.js that stores user details and has APIs for user authentication and CRUD operations.
Chapter 4, Adding a React Frontend to Complete MERN, completes the MERN skeleton application by integrating a React frontend. We will implement a working frontend with React views for interacting with the user CRUD operations and auth APIs on the server.
Chapter 5, Growing the Skeleton into a Social Media Application, builds a social media application by extending the skeleton application. We will explore the capabilities of the MERN stack by implementing social media features, such as post sharing, liking, commenting, following friends, and an aggregated newsfeed.
Chapter 6, Building a Web-Based Classroom Application, focuses on building a simple online classroom application by extending the MERN stack skeleton application. This classroom application will support multiple user roles, the addition of course content and lessons, student enrollments, progress tracking, and course enrollment statistics.
Chapter 7, Exercising MERN Skills with an Online Marketplace, utilizes the MERN stack technologies to develop basic features in an online marketplace application. We will implement buying-and selling-related features with support for seller accounts, product listings, and product search by category.
Chapter 8, Extending the Marketplace for Orders and Payments, focuses on extending the online marketplace we built in the previous chapter by implementing capabilities for buyers to add products to a shopping cart, checkout, and place orders, and for sellers to manage these orders and have payments processed from the marketplace application. We will also integrate Stripe to collect and process payments.
Chapter 9, Adding Real-Time Bidding Capabilities to the Marketplace, focuses on teaching you how to use the MERN stack technologies, along with Socket.IO, to easily integrate real-time behavior in a full-stack application. We will do this by incorporating an auctioning feature with real-time bidding capabilities in the MERN marketplace application.
Chapter 10, Integrating Data Visualization with an Expense Tracking Application, focuses on using MERN stack technologies along with Victory—a charting library for React—to easily integrate data visualization features in a full-stack application. We will extend the MERN skeleton application to build an expense tracking application that will incorporate data processing and visualization features for expense data recorded by a user over time.
Chapter 11, Building a Media Streaming Application, focuses on extending the MERN skeleton application to build a media uploading and streaming application using MongoDB GridFS. We will start by building a basic media streaming application, allowing registered users to upload video files that will be stored on MongoDB and streamed back so that viewers can play each video in a simple React media player.
Chapter 12, Customizing the Media Player and Improving SEO, upgrades the media viewing capabilities of our media application with a custom media player and autoplay media list. We will implement customized controls on the default React media player, add a playlist that can be autoplayed, and improve SEO for the media details by adding selective server-side rendering with data for just the media detail view.
Chapter 13, Developing a Web-Based VR Game, uses React 360 to develop a three-dimensional virtual reality (VR)-infused game for the web. We will explore the three-dimensional and VR capabilities of React 360 and build a simple web-based VR game.
Chapter 14, Making the VR Game Dynamic Using MERN, is where you will build a dynamic VR game application by extending the MERN skeleton application and integrating React 360. We will implement a game data model that allows users to create their own VR games and incorporate the dynamic game data with the game developed using React 360.
Chapter 15, Following Best Practices and Developing MERN Further, reflects on the lessons learned in previous chapters and suggests improvements for further MERN-based application development. We will expand on some of the best practices already applied, such as modularity in the app structure, other practices that should be applied, such as writing test code, and possible improvements, such as optimizing bundle size.