I'm going to do an independent study with React for school, and I'm looking to build a full-stack application. I have lots of experience with react, but everything else I'd need is somewhat foreign to me. What I'm looking for is to provide a back-end for a React application.

I'm trying to find a back-end framework that can provide and integrate with almost everything I need (database, API, authentication). I will also need to be able to host everything eventually online rather than just locally on my computer. I don't want to use something that is just click-and-go: I want to learn a lot but find something that has much built in functionality, so I don't have to completely re-invent the wheel.

Does anyone else have experience with a stack you'd recommend that is a happy medium of helpful features while still requiring you to understand and implement the functionality yourself? Something well documented (e.g., it's easy to find documentation regarding putting all the pieces together) would be great.

Thanks in advance!

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8 upvotes·66.3K views
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Avatar of mazaira
C*O at Devs on trees·
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I would take either Rails or Node for your problem.

Rails is a great framework: super complete in regards of testing frameworks, authentication libraries, great community support.... but I would say that the latest versions are a bit of a mess for newcomers, because of the way they manage assets: if the assets are served by the framework(Assets Pipeline) vs using Webpack .

If you are already familiar with React, Node is another great framework that will require a bit more effort on selecting the dependencies but for your use case seems a great candidate.

In regards of what you are commenting about learning during the process, both can be Dockerized pretty easy and you can spend some time digging on the lifecycle of putting it into production. Rails has a ridiculous easy way of deploying with Heroku avoiding any kind of work, but if you want to get your hands dirty you can deploy either of the frameworks on a Dockerized environment to any cloud provider you like. That part is really interesting too, and if you are interested on the Devops side, I would say that Node is a bit easier and more convenient(smaller image sizes and times to build) than Rails. All in all:

Rails pros: stable framework, great community support, great testing utilities. Rails cons: How they manage the assets lately(Assets Pipeline vs Webpack), dockerize the app.

Node pros: You are already familiar with Js, simple, easy to put in prod allowing to spend time in the Devops side. Node cons: Dependency management in Js environments is a pain in the ass

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Avatar of mescobar
Backend Developer ·
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Greate documentation, lot's of info on StackOverflow and it's easy to learn, a lot of things it's already implemented on the stack. It's based on Ruby which is stable and constantly evolving.

Ruby/Rails have a lot of gems(libraries) that will allow you to connect to many DB systems, implement JWT or use a library for authentication.

I have a lot of API's created in Rails that respond to website and mobile apps, and you can create your first one without a lot of stress, responding with JSON easily.

You can use VSCode has good support for ruby and you will have all syntax help etc, I use Atom but I don't have the syntax support, didn't found a good package for that.

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11 upvotes·3 comments·66K views
Pouya Ataei
Pouya Ataei
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January 23rd 2021 at 5:14AM

You're joking right? this must be a joke. you cannot be serious suggesting Ruby on Rails in 2021.

You can use VSCode has good support for ruby and you will have all syntax help etc? imma jump off the window.

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Marcelo Escobar
Marcelo Escobar
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January 23rd 2021 at 7:18PM

I didn't saw your recommendation to haydenlingle problem.

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Julien DeFrance
Julien DeFrance
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January 24th 2021 at 4:48AM

Ruby and Rails are anything but dead.

From an easy to learn standpoint, from the innovation that they are still bringing in every release, and the ability to quickly and reliably ship performant, maintainable web application and backends, Ruby and Ruby on Rails are still the go-to solutions for a wide majority of start-ups. And even teams and companies that are no longer in their startup days still value and use Rails, and have no intention of switching over to anything else.

https://www.netguru.com/blog/is-ruby-on-rails-dead

https://perfectial.com/blog/is-ruby-on-rails-dead/

https://themasters.io/blog/posts/is-ruby-on-rails-already-dead

Long Live Rails!

https://rubyonrails.org/

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Avatar of Alberto Mazaira

Alberto Mazaira

C*O at Devs on trees