What is the MERN stack?
The technology stack is the collection of three tire technologies, which are the frontend, backend and at the end, there is a database. Together, these three technologies combined to form a full stack.
If you ever hear that a person is a full-stack developer, means they can work on each of three i.e. frontend, backend, and database.
MERN Stack is a bundle of 4 technologies where ‘M’ represents MongoDB and it talks about database technology. ‘E’ represents Express.JS which is a framework of NodeJS. ‘R’ represents ReactJS, a framework or library of JavaScript that is used in frontend development, and ‘N’ represents NodeJS.
React.js works on the front end and Node.js on the server end. Node.js is a runtime environment, which is used to build the application of server-end. Node.js runs on the server and Express.js framework runs inside it. It handles all the requests and responses coming from the front end to the back end. In the stack, MongoDB is a database that cannot communicate with ReactJS. Data should be shown at the front end. The server will come in between, in which Node.js & Express.js frameworks will run. This is the MERN stack & that’s how it works.
Whether you are a beginner, pursuing any technical course or in hunt of a job, this blog post will be going to give you some better ideas to upgrade your portfolios and showcase projects that might land you a better placement. Here, we will discuss some of the important MERN stack projects ideas which can enhance your knowledge or skills and give you some real-life based experience while working on them.
E-Commerce Platform
Here, we will learn the tech stack should be to make an e-commerce app. It takes a lot of things to create an e-commerce app. How will you make it? Let’s understand step by step. We’ll walk you through all the essential components and how to utilize them effectively to develop a fully functional E-commerce application.
First of all, you have to make a frontend for what you need JavaScript because you are building something on the stack of JavaScript.
Whatever app you are making, whatever interaction is happening all that will be handled by ‘React’ and it will handle with Redux.
The next thing you need in the front end is a React Router.
You should know these 4 things before getting into this project i.e. JavaScript, React, Redux, and React router.
For backend development, use Node.js with Express.js.
To host Express and Node.js, Heroku or REPL can be used.
For the backend, you need Node.js, Express, and MYSQL.
For database management, it is okay to use SQL. PostgreSQL database is nice to use here.
Use ‘Sequelize’ along with ‘PostgreSQL’ to make your work better.
Real-Time Chat Application
Firstly, we are figuring out the key functional requirements of a chat application.
A regular chat application should have a one-on-one chat feature, group chat, a read receipt feature which means when you are sending messages to someone and you should be able to get the double tick mark. You should be able to see your online status or share your online status with others. There should be provisioning of notification that is if there is a new message waiting for you in your chat there should be a pop-up notification and you can share multimedia data such as pictures, videos, files, and whatnot.
Coming to the technical requirements, one of the most important things for any real-time chat application is low latency. The system should be also highly reliable and available. It should be able to serve both mobile and desktop clients i.e. a web interface and it should have storage for chat history.
The system we design should be also able to handle huge amounts of data with text, photos, videos Etc.
It also needs to have end-to-end encryption and finally, the connection should be client-initiated and then server-initiated.
For the front end: react.js is used to build user interfaces and handle live updates.
For backend development, use Node.js with Express.js.
Socket.io should be added to handle real-time messaging between users.
Mongo dB can be used as the database.
The back end can be hosted on Heroku or Digital Ocean, while the front end can be deployed to Vercel or Netlify.
Food Delivery App
Before we try our hands-on projects like this, we all should have prior knowledge of JavaScript, HTML, and CSS. Without these skills, you won’t be able to make the best out of it. This kind of application is developed with a login/signup feature, a feature to filter food items by different categories (such as rating, price, veg., non-veg) add to cart, track your order, and a responsive Ui design.
Here you can use Bootstrap for CSS and react.js for frontend.
The use of node.js with express.js is suggested for the backend. This will be going to handle tasks like managing orders and users.
You can choose to use MongoDB for the database because of its flexibility.
Socket.io should be added for real-time order tracking.
The backend can be hosted on ‘Heroku’ or AWS, while the frontend can be deployed to ‘Vercel’ or ‘Netlify’.
Fitness Tracker website
A fitness tracker web application is another best MERN Stack project idea where it can help all fitness freaks to monitor and manage their day-to-day activity. They can track their health metrics very efficiently. Users can add their daily calorie intake, steps, water intake, sleeping hours, and workouts which can let them overview their health progress.
You can use react.js with react-router for navigation and material-UI for responsive design. This all can be used to do frontend development.
The use of node.js with express.js is suggested for the backend which will manage Apis for user data and reports.
MongoDB can be used to store user profiles, progress reports, and fitness data.
Addition of socket.io for live updates.
The backend can be hosted on Heroku or AWS, while the frontend can be deployed to ‘Vercel’ or ‘Netlify’, and the database on MongoDB atlas.
Mood-Based Music Recommendation
While working on this project we are dealing with a trained deep-learning model which will fetch a person’s emotion with the help of human faces (images passed over to it). This will develop your abilities to work with complex algorithms and AI models, already gaining demand in the industry. It will further be going to combine all these emotions with music recommendations presenting it as a real-world application. We can set algorithms as we want our applications to respond. For instance: It will show the top 5 music related to your mood or emotions reflected by the image. This is a full-stack project and will surely stand out as it involves the use of AI, coding, and applications to help people out.
Cryptocurrency Portfolio Tracker
While building a cryptocurrency tracking app, you need to keep multiple parts in mind such as asset tracking, logging changes, calculating total values, managing and monitoring investments in real-time, and watching their portfolio performance.
Before you jump into the process of making this project, you should have a better understanding of Knowledge of JavaScript and ES6+, MongoDB, Express.js, React.js, Node.js, a Basic Understanding of RESTful APIs, HTML/CSS, Git and Version Control, API Integration, and Authentication (JWT/OAuth).
The database you can use is MongoDB, which will store the data on your investments.
Booking App System:
You can also try this project by making a clone of any other application such as Airbnb using the MERN stack. This application will let you explore the information about different places, view, and book as well. This application will have a home page, where you are going to fetch all the places that we can book and when you click a specific place, you can see more information about that place like title and link to Google Maps, can also open photo gallery to see all the events. These are some of the key features of the booking application.
Here, user login and registration forms will be added for user authentication which is an important feature to incorporate in it.
This is good enough to showcase in your portfolio as it shows your abilities to handle various aspects of an application simultaneously.
Technology stack for booking applications:
Backend: Node.js with Express.js.
Frontend: React with Tailwind CSS.
Database: MongoDB.
Deployment: ‘Vercel’ for frontend, Heroku for backend, and MongoDB Atlas for database.
Wrapping up:
We have discussed a lot of MERN stack projects to showcase in your portfolio. You all have to be consistently going through all the concepts of the technology stack used for different applications. Try to add your creativity to these projects as well. But, if you still need any further help or want to learn “Mern stack web development course” in detail, you can reach out to our skilled and trained mentors in ESS Institute”, is one of the trusted Web development institute in Delhi. You will be working on some real-world projects as well. You can also enrol in our web development courses for the same. We know the learning curve is quite steep but our team is constantly working to make things easier to learn for all of you.
Be consistent and keep growing!
