Getting Started with Backend Development
This article is the eighth part of Week of Web(#WOW). If you don’t know what #WOW is here’s a card to it.
In this article, we will learn about Backend Development and know what happens in the server when a user interacts with an application.
What is Backend Development?
Backend Development is the part of full-stack development where what happens behind the scenes is defined. It is also known as server-side development.
For example, when you go to Coder's Capsule home page on Medium, what happens in the server is all the articles written on Coder's Capsule is fetched from the database and then displayed as a list on the homepage. When you click on an article. The server fetches all the content of the article you selected and then increases the number of views, calculates how much time you spent reading the article, fetches the number of claps on the articles and then all of these values are updated into the database. All of these actions are performed without interrupting the reading experience of the user.
So make sure you read this article completely!
What are the tools and technologies used for backend development?
A Programming Language
There are many programming languages out there which could be used for developing the backend for an application. The first step would be to get familiar with a programming language and try out a framework that enables you to write server side code better.
A few examples of programming language with their respective web frameworks are
- Node.js → Express
- Python → Django
- Ruby → Ruby on Rails
- PHP → Laravel
- C# → .NET
- Java → Spring
Since we already learned JavaScript for frontend we will use Node.js for Backend.
Database
Data is a collection of a small sized information. This data can be stored in an organised collection called Database. This organisation provides better accessibility and management.
The main purpose of the database is to be able to handle large amount of information which includes storing, fetching and managing data using Database Management Systems(DBMS)
A few example of popular databases are
- MongoDB
- CouchDB
- Amazon Web Services
- Firebase Firestore
Web Server
A web server consists of both hardware and software working together. On the hardware side a web server is a computer that stores software and data for the given application. This computer is connected to internet and can exchange data over the air.
On the software side, it includes rules and permission for how the data stored on hardware is accessed. This data can be accessed using several protocols like HTTP(HyperTExt Transfer Protocol), SMTP(Simple Mail Transfer Protocol) and FTP(File Transfer Protocol).
How an application works at it’s most basic level?
When an application needs a file that is on a web server, the application requests for the file using an HTTP request.
This request connects to the web server and the protocol determines whether the request should be accepted or not, searches for the file and then sends it to the application.
If everything goes well a status response 200 is sent or if the file isn't found status response 404 is sent.
Static Web server
A static web server is a web server that straight away sends the file without any conditions or processing. Such web servers are load the same files every time and hence called static web server.
In other words static web servers just host your frontend files and display it every time these files are accessed. There is no backend code written to change the files everytime.
Dynamic Web Server
A dynamic web server is a static web server along with a software and a database. The files to be fetched are processed and then fetched from the web server using HTTPS requests.
HTTPS Request Methods
As told earlier HTTPS requests is sent by a user (via an application) to the server to connect to the web server and perform actions. The methods indicate which kind of action is to be performed. The four most used methods are described here.
GET Method
The GET method is used to fetch data from the web server along with an URI(Uniform Resource Identifier) to identify which data is to be fetched.
POST Method
The POST method sends data from the user to the web server along with a URI to identify which kind of data is being sent.
PUT Method
The PUT method replaces the data in the web server with the data sent by the user using an URI to identify which data is being replaced.
DELETE Method
The DELETE method deletes the data in the web server by identifying the data to be deleted using an URI.
And that is how a backend architecture is developed.
In the next article, we get started with Node.js and setup our repository to process files dynamically.
This is Vinayak Tekade from Coder’s Capsule in collaboration with Developer Student Clubs Amrita School of Engineering Bengaluru signing off.
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