Build a Node.js CRUD App Using React and Feathers

Building a modern project requires splitting the logic into front-end and back-end code. The reason behind this move is to promote code re-usability. For example, we may need to build a native mobile application that accesses the back-end API. Or we may be developing a module that will be part of a large modular platform.

The popular way of building a server-side API is to use Node.js with a library like Express or Restify. These libraries make creating RESTful routes easy. The problem with these libraries is that we'll find ourselves writing a ton of repetitive code. We'll also need to write code for authorization and other middleware logic.

To escape this dilemma, we can use a framework like Feathers to help us generate an API in just a few commands.

What makes Feathers amazing is its simplicity. The entire framework is modular and we only need to install the features we need. Feathers itself is a thin wrapper built on top of Express, where they've added new features—services and hooks. Feathers also allows us to effortlessly send and receive data over WebSockets.

In this tutorial we're going to build a CRUD contact manager application using Node.js, React, Feathers and MongoDB, starting from the ground up.