Streamline Your Full-Stack Development

The Challenges of Full-Stack Development

As a frontend developer, you might find it overwhelming to set up a database and navigate the backend and data layer aspects of your project. This is where a seamless solution for hosting your full-stack JavaScript application can make a significant difference.

A Solution for Full-Stack Development

This solution offers a range of features that make it an attractive option for full-stack development:

• Ultra-usable abstractions: Providing easy-to-use abstractions on top of popular cloud services, allowing you to focus on writing code rather than configuring services.
• Serverless made easy: Going from code to a working URL in just 30 seconds, without worrying about servers, config, or sweat.
• Frontend-friendly: Focusing on making serverless development accessible and easy to understand for frontend developers.

Building a Full-Stack Application

Let’s walk through the process of building a simple news app that fetches the latest US news from sources like CNN, ABC News, and The Guardian. We’ll use Node.js and React to create a seamless user experience.

Prerequisites

Before we dive in, make sure you have the following:

• Familiarity with JavaScript, Node.js, and React
• Understanding of serverless functions
• Node.js installed on your local machine
• Familiarity with Git and GitHub

Getting Started

To start using this solution, sign up with your GitHub account and authorize access. This solution offers a generous free plan that accommodates five free apps, so don’t hesitate to give it a try.

Creating a Node + React App

We’ll use an example app to get started. Clone the repository, run npm install, and let’s begin building our news app.

Replacing the Dummy API with the News API

We’ll delete the existing API and add two new GET APIs: one to fetch the latest news and another to fetch news from sources’ RSS feeds and save it in the data table.

// api/news.js
import rssParser from 'rss-parser';

const parser = new rssParser();

export async function getLatestNews() {
  // Fetch latest news from sources
}

export async function getNewsFromRssFeed() {
  // Fetch news from sources' RSS feeds and save to data table
}

Adding the API Routes and Related Files

We’ll add the necessary files and routes to serve our API endpoints. This includes installing the rss-parser module and creating files to handle the API requests.

// api/index.js
import express from 'express';
import { getLatestNews, getNewsFromRssFeed } from './news';

const app = express();

app.get('/latest-news', getLatestNews);
app.get('/news-from-rss-feed', getNewsFromRssFeed);

export default app;

Calling the News API from React

We’ll modify the React code to call our new APIs and display the latest news stories.

// components/NewsFeed.js
import React, { useState, useEffect } from 'eact';
import axios from 'axios';

const NewsFeed = () => {
  const [news, setNews] = useState([]);

  useEffect(() => {
    axios.get('/latest-news')
     .then(response => setNews(response.data));
  }, []);

  return (
    <div>
      {news.map(item => (<p>{item.title}</p>))}
    </div>
  );
};

export default NewsFeed;

Deploying the News App

Once we’ve made the necessary changes, we’ll commit and push them to GitHub. This solution will auto-deploy the changes to the staging environment, and we can test our app before deploying it to production.

Next Steps

This solution offers a range of features beyond what we’ve covered in this example. You can explore scheduled functions, event functions, and custom domains to take your application to the next level.