A backend tutorial

A few days ago, I gave a talk to participants of the 2019 UNC Makeathon about how to create a backend web service.

What is a backend web service? In a nutshell, it’s where all the data lives in a web app or mobile app. Some data can live on the device itself (like cookies to keep track of your session), but most data needs to live in a centralized, authoritative “source of truth”. This source of truth is the backend. It consists of a database (written by somebody else and used by you, the programmer) and a server (written by you) that sits between the clients and the database. The server receives requests by clients, validates them, and retrieves and stores data in the database.

Anyway, it’s a pretty essential part of most apps these days. You can learn more about it from these resources from the talk:

• A recording on YouTube
• The slides from the talk
• The tutorial source code, which includes a simple example backend written in Javascript using the Express.js framework.

If you’re building a web app or mobile app and need help creating a backend, feel free to swing by the App Lab when it’s open.