Understanding the Basic Web Development Framework

To get you in the right mind-set to understand the benefits of utilizing Node.js, MongoDB, and AngularJS as your web framework, this section provides an overview of the basic components of most websites. If you are already familiar with the full web framework, then this section will be old hat, but if you only understand just the server side or client side of the web framework, then this section will give you a more complete picture.

The main components of any web framework are the user, browser, webserver, and backend services. Although websites vary greatly in terms of appearance and behavior, all have these basic components in one form or another.

This section is not intended to be in-depth, comprehensive, or technically exact but rather a very high-level perspective of the parts involved in a functional website. The components are described in a top-down manner, from user down to backend services. Then the next section discusses the Node.js-to-AngularJS stack from the bottom up, so you can get a picture of where each of the pieces fits and why. Figure 1.1 provides a basic diagram to help you visualize the components in a website/web application, which are discussed in the following sections.

Figure 1.1 Basic diagram of the components of a basic website/web application.