For today’s enterprise that is dependent on its mobile app to deliver funnel-filling, ROI-returning experiences, innocuous-sounding names like “Jellybean,” “Kit Kat” or “Lollipop” are the stuff of fear and loathing.

The Fullstack Development Process – Keeping Your App On the Fast Track

Indeed, every time Android releases one of its new, sweetly-named mobile OS, or Apple pushes its numerically-themed updates, it’s a signal to enterprises that they will again need to dive into their mobile platform -- and ensure it’s still functioning.

FullStack development – at least here at iTexico – is the way we help our clients future-proof their investment. When maintaining a competitive edge requires a hiccup-free approach to technology, FullStack is the path that allows for rapid development, constant iteration, maximum efficiency and much more.

For the uninitiated, a FullStack JS practice is one that uses the JavaScript language to create Enterprise-ready Mobile, Web, and API solutions. As stated by our close partner and CTO of Appcelerator: “JavaScript will become the default Enterprise programming language.”

In other words, JavaScript is the future, and that future is now.

JavaScript first found favor for traditional web platforms, and in fact continues to be the engine that fuels browsers, complex Web applications, server-side development, mobile development, and in the overall Internet of Things.

JavaScript developers can now access a robust ecosystem of open-source libraries, frameworks, and tools in their front-end UI development for mobile as well. At iTexico our FullStack JS arsenal is powered by AngularJS, Backbone.js, Meteor and React -- core frameworks upon which browser-based UIs are being written.

Let’s explore what we would consider the “best of the breed” frameworks further, in the context of their appropriate technologies:

Mobile:

Appcelerator/Titanium is an open-source framework that allows for the creation of mobile apps on platforms including iOS, Android, Windows Phone, BlackBerry OS, and Tizen from a FullStack JavaScript codebase.

Ionic is a FullStack JavaScript platform for building and scaling mobile apps with HTML5 and web technologies like AngularJS.

SPA:

AngularJS is an open-source web application framework maintained by Google that emphasizes collaboration as a means of conquering challenges. It aims to simplify both the development and the testing of such applications by providing a framework for client-side model-view-controller (MVC) and model-view-viewmodel (MVVM) architectures, along with components commonly used in rich internet applications.

As iTexico’s preferred framework, our developers have a deep expertise in utilizing AngularJS when developing web applications. AngularJS is the front end component of the MEAN stack, working together with Node.js runtime, Express.js backend framework and the MongoDB database.

ReactJS is another open-source JavaScript library for the front end UI. It is utilized by Facebook, Instagram, Imgur, Bleacher Report, Feedly, Airbnb and more, as well as by a dedicated group of developers.

React is intended to help developers build large applications which employ data that changes over time. Its goal is to be simple, declarative, and composable. React only handles the UI in an app, which means it only represents the view layer in the model-view-controller (MVC) software pattern. This allows it to be used in conjunction with other JavaScript libraries or larger JavaScript MVC frameworks.

It is important to reiterate that React is not a complete framework, and you cannot build a fully functional dynamic application in React alone. That said, React is a great tool for a team of developers, because it enforces the UI and workflow patterns, keeping the view layer consistent.

API:

NodeJS is an open-source, cross-platform runtime environment for developing server-side web applications. It provides a non-blocking I/O API with an event-driven architecture to optimize an application’s throughput and scalability for real-time web applications. It relies on Google V8 JavaScript engine, and contains a built-in library to allow applications to act as a web server without software such as Nginx, Apache HTTP Server, or IIS.

NodeJS is used by many Fortune 1000 companies, including Rakuten, PayPal,Microsoft, Yahoo!, Walmart, SAP, LinkedIn and many more.

ExpressJS is a Node.js web application server framework, designed for building single-page, multi-page, and hybrid web applications. The de facto standard server framework for Node.js, it is a relatively minimal server with many features available as plugins. It is the back-end part of the MEAN stack, together with the MongoDB database and the AngularJS front end framework.

LoopBack.io is a highly-extensible, open-source, Node.js framework from iTexico partner StrongLooop. It allows developers to quickly create dynamic end-to-end REST APIs, and connect devices or browsers to data and services. Loopback.io allows the generation of Android, iOS, and AngularJS SKKs to easily create client applications.

LoopBack contains several add-on components for push notifications, file management, third-party login, and geolocation.

Apigee/A127 is a highly-extensible, open-source, Node.js framework used to quickly and easily create dynamic end-to-end REST APIs.
SailsJS is a Realtime MVC framework for Node.js that is designed to make it easy to build custom, enterprise-grade Node.js apps. It is especially good for building chat, realtime dashboards, or multiplayer games.

Database:

MongoDB is a cross-platform document-oriented database. It does not adhere to the traditional table-based relational database structure, but instead favors JSON - like documents with more dynamic schemas.
Couchbase Server, formerly knows as Membase, is an open-source, distributed NoSQL document-oriented database that is optimized for interactive apps. It is engineered for performance, scalability, and simplified administration, and is supportive of large data sets.
Redis is an industry leading, open-source, networked, in-memory data structure server. It is used as a database cache and message broker.
ElasticSearch is a search server based on Lucene. It provides a distributed, multienant-capable full-text search engine with RESTful web interface and schema-free JSON documents.

At iTexico, our FullStack JS Service offerings will help your business choose the right technologies for your Enterprise.

We offer workshops and Team mentoring for the following:

Mobile: Appcelerator or Ionic
SPA: Angular or React
API Composition in Node.js: LoopBack, Express or A127
NoSQL design: MongoDB or Couchbase

About the Author

Abhijeet Pradhan is the Former CTO and Co-Founder of iTexico, a multi-platform mobile app and fullstack software design and development firm with over 100+ developers, which includes Extended Team as a Service (eTaaS). Abhijeet is passionate about technology and its applications to everyday consumer and business life.