is there a possibility to only use the frontend part of meteor and serve the files via a static vanish server?
I want to build a web app which uses an existing PHP REST API, but I lice the reactivity and the tempting of meteor, which I can get with the Session variable.
If there is a simple way to separate the frontend parts from the back so that I can easily serve them, would be awesome. Especially the web socket is not needed. Because there will be no after connection to the deliver server.
This cannot be done. For meteor to get live updates you need a connection to a server of some sort to relay the message down.
There are a couple of methods you could use, however
If you like the DOM reactivity and all the data is locally hosted/you would like to fetch it from php would like to use it in a static application something like angular or react could help you.
The other is you could use a deployed instance of an application & have it stored on a static/varnish server. But use DDP to have the server relay data. See http://arunoda.me/blog/hosting-meteor-apps-as-a-client.html
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I'm trying to upgrade an old mobile application written in vanilla Javascript+React hosted on Cordova. This application leverages a simple api on the server-side:
when the app requires a page, sends a request to the server
the server elaborate the request, fetch the resources, and then reply with a complete HTML+JS. The Javascript is a ReactJs view compiled with Gulp/Browserify
the app takes the reply and stores it in a local Sqlite DB, then mount the received code and the view become reactive.
if the user requests a view but has no connectivity, the app search though the Sqlite db wether there is a cached view and uses it instead of requesting a fresh copy from the server.
When developing, the React JSX code is immediately compiled to a vanilla JS so, when in production, the api only needs to merge the vanilla JS with the HTML template. Plus, adding new features and fixing bugs is quite easy, because each user essentially download any updated view, each time he enters in it.
The problems with this approach are:
developing is painful because of the continuous compilation
a "base" part of the application resides on Cordova assets (basically the utilities to fetch from server, caching etc) and fixing this parts needs a new app release or ugly override patches
the caching feature often causes problems to the Sqlite database (which is used also for other stuff on the app); as a result, the DB sometimes corrupts and the user must clear the app data.
we would like to get rid of React
We already used NuxtJs for generating static sites, and it's great, but in this case I cannot leverage the SSG because the app should be almost completely served from the api, so we can keep the easy-feature-and-fix stuff.
I never used NustJs SSR and wonder if could be suitable for my use case, for example, could I spin up a NuxtJs instance on server-side which generates the html output and hydrate a barely empty Javascript client on Cordova? Is there a better way to accomplish this task? Should I use only Vue instead?
Thanks
I am currently in the process of creating a portfolio website for myself but due to hosting restrictions, I cannot make use of Node.js.
I know Angular can run on any web server, but is it possible to make use of Express.js to create web api's with relying on Node.js to run these web api's using Express.js?
If not, is there an alternative solution to create web api's that I can call using Angular and later for my mobile version of my website?
Please note that my shared hosting runs using cPanel.
As per definition Express.js, or simply Express, is a web application framework for Node.js so you can't do that. Alternatives would be to use a different backend language.
That also depends if your server supports them, for example, you can go with .NET CORE
You cannot use Express without NodeJS by definition so you have to deploy your backend somewhere else in you want to use it.
I suggest giving a look Firebase: you could write your backend using http cloud functions in express without paying anything until a reasonable amount of traffic (after that, is pretty cheap). You could also get rid of cPanel and deploy your frontend there via Firebase hosting.
Maybe you can try to build at first a web application with express. Of course you can create a web app without express if you need it. With express and Node.js I created a MySQL REST API. With HTML and Ajax you can fetch the Data from the API. So you can create two applications. One application where you need to run Node.js because it`s much easier to create a REST API with express. The second one is fully without Node.js.
Maybe there are better solutions, but inside each Web Application you can than but you can then access this API in any web application using jQuery. It doesn't matter if it is written with PHP, ASP.Net Core, Java EE / EE4J. You can also access this API in Ruby, Angular, React, Vue etc. using an AJAX request.
In some scenarios you can't start Node.js as a server because an application is already running on apache2 or nginx. There this would be a workaround to use something like this. For example, one could also integrate applications with HTML+JS in a CMS system that accesses other database tables and thus extend such a system without an iframe.
So can be helpful for few scenarios. Now just doesn't get around the actual goal of doing without Node.js completely or even express. But why are there REST APIs? So that you can query the data and incorporate it somewhere else. Otherwise you would have to build a REST API with another technology. Especially in the example of accessing MySQL with JavaScript, this would not be quickly feasible.
If you are looking for a similar solution to separate the web app and the REST API, but you don't need Node.js, then you should really build a REST API with .Net Core or with another technology, depending on what is possible and installed on your server. It could be Java or PHP behind it or Ruby.
The API that provides the REST access does not have to be written in JavaScript. You only need to be able to access it with JavaScript. So you can use many different approaches to access JSON data. I hope that in the short time with my bad English I have explained the basic idea, how to proceed stylistically and where advantages exist in REST interfaces.
With this, it should be self-explanatory that you don't have to use NodeJS and Express, but with JavaScript it's a pleasant solution. Only you have to ask yourself if a JavaScript application has to provide this interface at all or if in the end only a JavaScript application has to access this interface. Very big difference.
For backend rest api you can use golang with gorilla framework. Golang simple keyword and easy to learn.best important point is performance. If your server support golang you can use golang for backend..
ExpressJS is NodeJS framework so it's impossible to create an API without NodeJS.
Angular is front-end framework so you can host it on web hosting server.
If you need to create back-end APIs, you can use other clouding host servers that support NodeJS.
It's fairly simple to build this with just the net/http package. Set up a router that handles various commands and deal with the response accordingly.
I've developed an application that I would like to use meteor.js for real time updates (I want to enhance but not change my program, for example when a user adds a comments make it update in real-time ) . Problem is meteor.js uses node.js (so javascript as server-side code). I use LAMP stack, Is it possible to get PHP to feed data into meteor.js from mysql.
Meteor is more than just an 'interactive webapplication'-builder or javascript framework. The idea is to have only one programming language (besides HTML/CSS for markup) to do all the work. Basically it creates a 'remote server' (in the clients browser) it can push data to and at the same time it publishes various API's to the users system. The data passed through these API's / connections has a specific structure which has to be adhered at all time.
Meteor is built around NodeJS, which makes it hard (if not impossible) to run it without this backend. Sure you can try to mimic the backend using PHP, but it would be a waste of time. Reading your question you'll be better of using a javascript framework like jQuery or Prototype. Unlike Meteor you will need to do the AJAX calls (POST & CallBack) yourself, but you can actually decide which backend you want to use yourself (including PHP / MySQL).
If you want to do this anyway you need to check the Meteor & NodeJS source code to see what the minimum requirements are to make Meteor run under PHP. The PHP stack has to interpret the commands Meteor sends and receivers, but this won't be an easy task.
You can use comet (or reverse ajax) for realtime updates.
Trying to marry node.js with PHP doesn't sound like a worthwhile path to go down. If someone insisted on using a system like Meteor.js, yet with a PHP back-end, it would make more sense to look at AngularJS which is mainly the client side.
Of course, that is different technology stack. If someone really insisted on the blending, one could consider using server side sockets to interact with PHP Web services; and/or use mongodb and/or mysql-node to interact with the same databases.
I released a meteorite package that interacts with a Wordpress site that has the Wordpress JSON API. A quick fix. For now.
Comes with a backend call that will return the raw data, or a publication that stores the posts using their id's instead of a randomly generated mongoid. And some basic templates to get you started including a Session variable that keeps track of the currently selected post.
I'm working on it a lot more and will eventually have a version that directly makes mysql calls from node so you won't need php or Wordpress; just the ability to access the mysql database (which can be remote, with the appropriate configuration, or on the same machine).
So I am creating a multiplatform application using React & Spring (Java)
I want to make the Spring backend a REST webservice that can be called by both a React-Native and a React frontend.
I currently have my project broken up into 3 sub projects: backend (Spring), webapp-frontend (React webapp), mobile-frontend (React native)
My question is on how I should actually serve the React webapp frontend. I will have the webservice on a server somewhere so that the React code can hit it to make API calls, but as far as serving the React webapp would it be better to do serve it with the same backend server or would it be better to make a seperate frontend server with something like express? Also, are there any other alternatives?
Serving the react webapp with either express or the same server as the REST backend is both valid options. I would say that if there is no specific reason for choosing express, serving it on the same server as the spring backend is your best choice.
Recall that the frontend and backend will still be decoupled and only communicate through the REST-interface so to extend the backend-server to host the react-webapp should be quite simple, here's an example that could be helful: React,Spring,Rest example
However there is a couple arguments that I see that could make you choose a separate server then the REST backend, for example:
Isolated restarts and failures. If you want to be able to restart only your react-frontend without affecting the REST backend you will probably want to run them on different servers. Another thing to consider is if you expect that the backend will need to scale heavily and you'll need to replicate the backend across multiple servers, that might be easier to do if the frontend is running on its own separate server.
Server-side rendering of JavaScript (React) is possible through a node.js server like express but I don't think it is possible with a Spring server.
Also, are there any other alternatives?
Other alternatives then express/Spring, Yes. Other alternatives then hosting the fronted on the backend-server or on its own server? No
There are pros and cons with both choices and what is best depends on your needs.
Let's say I wrote a little HTML site, deployed on my nginx webserver. I created a database with MongoDB and stored several million entries in it. The MongoDB server is only listening on the local interface and accessible via localhost:27017.
Now I want to go to my webpage on my publicly accessible nginx webserver and access the entries in the database via JavaScript, by clicking a button "Show Users" or "Get latest entries" and so on. I need to perform only simple read-only-queries on the database like counting, searching, aggregating, and so on, so I don't need write access.
How do you generally implement this? Do I really need to set up PHP, Python, and Java to access the DB or is it somehow possible to solve this by only using HTTP/REST Interfaces? Can NodeJS help me to solve this? Do I have to remove nginx when using NodeJS?
Sorry, but I'm quite confused with all that JavaScript/ NodeJS/ mongoose/ MongoDB/ JSON stuff.
You can keep nginx as server for static content like your html files. To serve dynamic data, use node.js to create a rest interface. The rest interface will provide the data it fetches from your MongoDb.
Since you have millions of entries in your database and do not require complex functionality I would recommend the mongodb-native-driver as node.js module.
On the client, use ajax to perform api calls to your created rest interface.
Mongoose is built on top of the native driver to allow object modeling.