Introduction

This is a brief guide to building a framework for a full-stack web application from scratch.

Features

• Express.js Backend
• React Frontend
  • Can easily substitute Vue or other frontends
• Postgres Database
  • Can easily substitue MySQL or other databases
• Full Docker Setup for Development
  • You don’t have to install Node or a database locally - it all runs in Docker!
• Docker Deployment
• GitHub Actions

What this is: this guide will give you the steps to build the framework, including links to associated resources and tutorials. Basically, it will show you what to do.

What this is not: this guide is not an exhaustive explanation of why or how to do these steps. It also doesn’t cover how to build a web application once you have this framework set up. So, you may have to do some extra reading to really understand what is going on and match this framework to your needs.

Conventions

Some brief conventions in this guide:

• Code blocks will include a comment at the top giving the filename where the code is placed or the terminal where the commands should be executed.
• Be careful copy/pasting code - you may have to modify code or commands to match your environment!

FAQ

• Can I download this framework somewhere? Yes, it is on GitHub. However, the value in this framework is really going through the work of building it yourself so you understand what it contains and how it works. Then, once you’ve built it yourself once, you can reuse your own version and tweak it as needed.