Which backend for AngularJS?

wywywywy · 31 Aug 2016 at 15:25

Hi all.

Going to start a new project soon and will probably use Angular for the front end.

I'm just curious what do you guys use as a back end to serve JSON?

Most articles and discussions centre around using NoSQL but we need a relational database which is probably going to be MySQL. So the missing link is how to server JSON from MySQL really.

Express.js seems popular but again it seems to be centred around NoSQL/MongoDB. What other options are there that people actually use?

Thanks.

xbenjiiman · 31 Aug 2016 at 15:46

If you're going with Node.js, both Express and Hapi are great for serving JSON. Express isn't centred around NoSQL because it just handles the serving requests and routing, the rest is up to you.

You could use an ORM or just orchestrate your own logic to serve the JSON (DB query, JSON.stringify, etc).

wywywywy · 31 Aug 2016 at 15:53

Thanks had not heard of Hapi before. I'll have a look.

Sorry when I said centred around NoSQL, I meant the articles (tutorials etc) and discussions on the internet, not the software itself.

I assume they all work well with Google App Engine?

xbenjiiman · 1 Sep 2016 at 08:59

wywywywy said:
Thanks had not heard of Hapi before. I'll have a look.

Sorry when I said centred around NoSQL, I meant the articles (tutorials etc) and discussions on the internet, not the software itself.

I assume they all work well with Google App Engine?

Ah, apologies

There's also Strongloop's loopback which is entirely API based.

GAE shouldn't have a problem with Node.js at all. You can choose which version you want to use by adding the following to package.json

Code:

"engines": {
    "node": "~6.5"
}

wywywywy · 1 Sep 2016 at 11:37

Much appreciated. So are the Node.js offerings the way to go for the back end? It's all new to me because I've been a "traditional" developer for years.

planty · 1 Sep 2016 at 23:44

If you implement the access to your backend using an api then the fact that you're using angular doesn't really have any bearing on which backend technology you should use. Given that it's javascript you might find it easier to do it with node because then your not constantly switching languages. But if you have a good knowledge of a different server side language and want to get something working quickly I'd do it in that instead.