Build a Node.js CRUD App Using React and FeathersJS

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.

We’re going to build a CRUD contact manager application using Node.js, React, Feathers and MongoDB.

In this tutorial, you’ll see how to build the application from the bottom up. We’ll kick-start our project using the popular create-react-app tool.