I am a web developer and now want to extend my skills to mobile apps.
I am in love with angular.js and so I also like the ionic framework.
…so: no more questions what to use in the frontend.
Cordova is my tool for getting it on the phone.
But: What to use on the server?
I would like to spend as little time on the server as necessary and for the beginning, there won’t be much to handle.
So, two questions:
What did you choose as a backend?
Do you have a suggestions for me?
I want to have (list of nice buzzwords loading…): A REST API which will communicate via JSON (I don’t care about other options) - as this is the way Angular rocks.
I will need routing (…obvious), validation and I will need some kind of user management - maybe via OAuth/Facebook?!
At the start, I won’t need File Management, maybe later on.
I would like to use MongoDB as a database, but it’s more because I want to play with it - MySQL would do it to - no fancy stuff.
I have experiences with PHP and JS. I would be willing to learn Python or Go.
I want to have a self hosted version for the start.
I use Django (python) with Tastypie (creates a RESTful api from your models).
It has great user management and includes an admin application straight out of the box.
The documentation is also first-class.
I’ve got a lot of experience with Laravel. It’s very easy to setup and has routing components to quickly setup an API. Look into resourceful controllers. It also has an Eloquent ORM to interact with a variety of Databases.
But then again it does have a lot which you won’t be using, but I don’t see that as an issue as you’ll be learning a new framework in the process.
My project needed a CMS for the client to login and manage the API data, so I went with KeystoneJS where I could easily create both API routes easily and have a quick & easy CMS to manage data from. I had it up and running with my Ionic app in a few hours.
For those who developp in java, here we use RESTX http://restx.io/ a simple and efficient restfull framework. ( with great support with mongodb, but not only)
I’m surprised no-one has mentioned this especially since you clarified that you want to get up and started quickly -
Parse.com has a simple backend that requires no server setup at all, and built-in authentication. I think it’s great for prototyping so that you can focus on the mobile feature set rather than backend server headaches.
mean.io is another one that should definitely be mentioned. Seems like a perfect partner to me and I’m currently doing well building an Ionic app backed by a mean.io application.
How are you doing with your implementation? Is there a git repo to follow/fork? I’ve got thinkster and imgploadr along with ionic blank temp. As a small test.