Backend Development

Backend development is the server-side work behind an application: APIs, business logic, databases, queues and background jobs. Backend engineers pick languages such as Java, Python, Node.js or C#, decide how data is stored and how services talk to each other, and keep it all fast and correct under load. Most of the hard calls are trade-offs, such as SQL against NoSQL or a monolith against microservices.

177 articles

25/11/2019 1 min read

Nodemon not refreshing page automatically

while setting up a MERN app, i was using nodemon to reflect code edits and render the new…
18/11/2019 13 min read

What Is MongoDB? Documents, Collections, and How It Differs from SQL

What MongoDB is: documents, BSON, collections and databases, how they map to SQL tables and rows, and when…
15/09/2019 12 min read

Elasticsearch Architecture: Inverted Indexes, Shards, and Near-Real-Time Search

Elasticsearch architecture from the inside: the inverted index and its term dictionary, segments and the near-real-time refresh, shards…
14/07/2019 12 min read

Data Partitioning: Vertical, Horizontal, and the Sharding Question

Data partitioning explained: the umbrella concept under sharding, horizontal vs vertical partitioning, the partitioning vs sharding vocabulary sorted,…
12/05/2019 12 min read

Read/Write Separation: Scaling Reads with Replicas

Read/write separation: routing reads to replicas with the staleness audit, replica routing mechanics, replication lag as the governing…
10/03/2019 12 min read

Search Engines in System Design: When and How to Add Search

Search engine system design: search vs database queries, when to add elasticsearch, the indexing pipeline that keeps the…
05/01/2019 12 min read

Blob and Object Storage: Storing Files at Scale

Object storage explained: the flat key-space and HTTP model, blob vs object naming, object vs block vs file…
14/12/2018 6 min read

Graceful Shutdown and Process Signals in Node.js

Graceful shutdown for Node.js and Express: SIGTERM handling, keep-alive sockets, closing the pool last, readiness checks and Docker…
12/12/2018 6 min read

Node.js Performance: Clustering, Worker Threads, and What Actually Helps

Real benchmarks of the cluster module and worker threads on Node 10, plus event loop lag checks, PM2…
10/12/2018 8 min read

Testing Node.js APIs with Jest and Supertest

Testing an Express API with Jest and Supertest: app factory, auth helpers, error paths, a real database and…
07/12/2018 10 min read

JWT Authentication in Node.js and Express: Step by Step

JWT authentication for Express, step by step: bcrypt passwords, short-lived tokens, verify middleware, roles, refresh tokens and token…
05/12/2018 9 min read

How to Connect Node.js to PostgreSQL: pg, Pooling, and CRUD

Connect Node.js to PostgreSQL with pg 7: one PostgreSQL pool, parameterized CRUD, a transaction helper and constraint errors…
03/12/2018 9 min read

Node.js Environment Variables and Secrets: dotenv and Best Practices

Environment variables in Node.js with dotenv 6: a .env.example contract, a validated Joi config module, fail-fast startup and…
30/11/2018 10 min read

Node.js Error Handling and Middleware: A Practical Guide

Central error handling middleware for Express 4: AppError, the async error trap, RFC 7807 Problem Details, request ids…