Find out what it takes to become a full-stack developer and how you achieve the 'jack of all trades' status.

Introduction

Holding a full-stack developer tag means you are a jack-of-all-trades who provides high-end solutions using both front-end and back-end technologies. To achieve this tag, you have to learn a plethora of languages and tools. Let's thrive in today's generation by learning the following technologies to claim yourself as a jack-of-all-trades or a full-stack developer. 
 *Full-stack development with Spring Boot and React 
 *Full-stack development with Aurelia 
 *Full-stack development with JHipster 
 *Full-stack web development with Vue and ASP.NET 
 *Deploying your web applications 
 *Tutorials and courses

Full-stack development with Spring Boot and React 

Spring Boot is a Java-based backend framework where you can develop a standalone web application with an embedded application server and React is a JS library for user interfaces. Here, you will learn the technical aspects of building modern and scalable full-stack applications using Java-based Spring Framework and React. Let's explore: 

 1. Java programming language 

Java is a general-purpose, object-oriented programming language that is considered as the world's best application. It is fast, secure, and reliable. Java is free to access and is an independent programming language that can run on all platforms.

2. JPA to create and access a database 

Java Persistence API (JPA) is a Java class that provides object-relational mapping and represents the structure of a database table. Hibernate is a famous JPA implementation used in large-scale applications. By default, Spring Boot has a hibernate tool; and it also has a Crud Repository interface 
for CRUD operations. 

 3. Using Spring Boot for RESTful web service 

Web services are applications that use the HTTP protocol to communicate over the internet. Representational State Transfer (REST) is an architecture for creating web services, and it has elements such as unique identifiers, resource representation, self-descriptive message, and HATEOAS.

         You can use Spring Data Rest to create RESTful web services. It is a part of the Spring Data project and offers an easy, fast way of implementation. For testing your RESTful web services, multiple tools are available such  as Postman and cURL.

4. User interface using React component library 

React is a JS library for user interfaces. The components in React are reusable,  independent, and defined by using ES6 (ECMA Scripting 2015), a standardized JavaScript scripting language. React  ensures faster rendering of the interface with the help of virtual DOM, and you can use JSX to create a styling interface.

                                                                  

5. Testing in Spring Boot 

Spring Boot test starter has many handy libraries for testing. Some of them are J Unit, Mockito, AssertJ, etc. For performing unit testing, you can use J Unit, and for controller or endpoint testing, you can use MockMvc where it mocks the real situation. 

 6. MariaDB 

MariaDB is an open-source relational database that has more cutting edge features and provides more storage engines. It provides advanced clustering with Galera Cluster 4 and is compatible and easy to migrate.

7. Version control system 

GIT is one of the widely used free open-source version control tools for managing source code. It outclasses various SCM tools with high-end features such as multiple workflows, cheap local branching, and handy staging areas. GIT provides efficient ways to upgrade applications and also ensures the smooth working of NodeJs and NPM systems 

Full-stack development with Aurelia 

This section will provide you with the technical details of how to create a  highly scalable full-stack application with AureliaJS.

 1. Aurelia Framework 

Aurelia Framework is a convention over configuration modular JavaScript Framework. It is a collection of libraries for scripting, and it has well defined user interfaces. Here, you can include only the necessary dependencies rather than the complete bundle. Aurelia uses Inversion of Control (IOC) pattern to develop applications. This pattern helps to decrease the amount of work and allows the developer to specify and control them. It ensures high flexibility and sup- ports ES5, ES2015, ES2016, and TypeScript.

2. Styling the user interface 

For styling the user interface, you can learn styling tools such as SAAS and LESS, Bootstrap, Semantic UI, and Material Design. 

.SASS and LESS 
SASS and LESS are CSS that help to write better, reusable codes in an efficient way. It makes the code dynamic, understandable, and also reduces the amount of code, thereby increasing the productivity of developers. 
.Bootstrap 
It is one of the most popular front-end libraries that consist of HTML templates, CSS classes, and JavaScript files. The custom element and grid system feature of Bootstrap helps to create a responsive website.
 
.Semantic UI 
Semantic UI provides a lot of features such as modals, accordion elements, and 3D transformation. It also has many easily configurable themes.
 
.Material Design 
It is a philosophy design that is on shapes, shadows, and transition. IL is not a library, but many available libraries are based on material design.

3. Automating task with Gulp 

Gulp is an open-source, JavaScript-based task automation tool, and it uses code-over-configuration methodology to define its task. Here, you don't need to recompile the entire code for each change. 

4. Testing framework 

Aurelia is energized by open-source testing technologies such as Jasmine and Karma. Jasmine is used for testing JavaScript code, and Karma is an automatic test runner that executes the test script written in Jasmine. 

5. Creating a RESTful API with Node.js and Express.js 

Whenever a request reaches the backend, the server creates a new thread for the request and it releases the thread after responding. To handle millions of requests, this approach is not appropriate. Here comes the importance of Node.js. In Node.js, instead of creating new threads for each request, it uses the same main thread to handle the request. However, while using Node.js, the programmer has to write a lot of code even for simple user requests. To avoid this case, you can use Express.js, an open-source framework designed on top of NCK1c.js. Exprcss.js is very flexible, and programmers can develop robust APIs.                            6.MongoDB 

MongoDB is a NoSQL database that stores the information in a JSON -based document. To integrate MongoDB database with Node.js application, you can use one of the most popular NPM modules, and it is called Mongoose. It provides an easy way for data modelling and has built-in features such as validating and querying.

 Full-stack development with J Hipster 

J Hipster makes it easier for developers to develop full-stack web applications in less time. Here, developers don't need to spend time integrating technologies and can focus on their actual solution.

 1. Client-side technologies 

 Let's look into the various client-side technologies in J Hipster. They are as follows:

Styling tools 

*Bootstrap 

Bootstrap is one of the most popular frontend libraries that consist of HTML  templates, CSS classes, and JavaScript files. The custom element and grid system feature of Bootstrap help to create a responsive website. 

 *SASS 

SASS is a professional grade CSS extension language. With SASS, programmers can reuse CSS and can write maintainable style sheets. 

 Client-side framework 

 Angular and React are the two client-side frameworks supported in J Hipster. 

*Angular 

Angular is a rewrite of the AngularJs framework, written in TypeScript. As libraries in Angular are modular, developers can what they need  rather than the complete bundle. It also introduces advanced concepts such as Ahead of Time Compilation (AOT), lazy loading, and reactive programming. 

*React 

React is a JavaScript library for creating user interfaces, and it is not a complete MVVM framework. With the help of JSX, programmers can write React components. It only deals with rendering the UI, and it needs to integrate with other libraries to get similar functionalities as that of Angular. Some of the libraries are React Router, ReduxMobX, etc.

 Client-side build tools 

*Webpack 

Webpack is a modular bundle where you can bundle your assets, scripts, images, and styles; it also provides a flexible plugin system. Some benefits include translation of TypeDScript to JavaScript, optimized CSS and JS, compiled Sass, and so on. Webpack can reduce the bundle size, and uses a process called tree shaking that removes dead code. 

*BrowserSync 
BrowserSync is a synchronized browser testing tool. It synchronizes the file changes and webpage interactions of different browsers. It can provide a productive development set up by integrating with Webpack/GulpJS. 
 
Client-side testing tools 
 
*Karma 
Karma executes the test code to test real applications. It supports frame-works such as Jasmine, Mocha, Quint, and can also integrate with integration tools. 
 
*Protractor 
 It is an end-to-end testing framework for Angular that is also flexible with 
React, VueJs, etc.

2. Server-side technologies 
 Server-side framework 
 
Let's go through the server-side frameworks such as Spring, Hibernate, and Liquibase. 

*Spring framework 

Spring framework is the best framework among Java developers. It combines Inversion of Control (100), Aspect-Oriented Programming (AOP), and technology abstraction in a consistent manner. Spring provides various applications such as SpringBoot, Spring Security, Spring MVC, and Spring Data. 

*Hibernate 

Hibernate is a powerful Java tool for object-relational mapping. It automatically generates SQL queries based on the database semantics. It uses Java annotations to map an object-oriented model to a relational database scheme and also implements the Java Persistence API (JPA). 

*Liquibase 

Liquibase is a database version control tool that can track and manage database  schemes without interfering with SQL.

Server-side build tool 
 
*Maven 

Maven is a server-side build tool that uses the XML document. When it compares to Gradle, Maven is stable and more reliable. 
 
*Gradle 

Gradle is another build tool that uses GroovyDSL. It is more flexible and has more features compared to Maven. 

Server-side testing tool 

There are many server-side testing tools, which can be categorized based on unit testing, integration testing, performance testing, and behavior  testing. J Hipster supports JUnit, Gatling, and Cucumber testing tools.  
           JUnit is an open-source testing tool mainly used for unit testing. When combined with the Spring Test framework, it can be used for Unit Testing as well as REST API Integration test. Whereas, Gatling is an open-source performance and load testing tool. Cucumber is a behavior-driven development testing framework. 
 
Databases 
J Hipster supports SQL and NoSQL databases. The SQL databases include H2, MySQL, MariaDB, PostgreSQL, MS SQL, and Oracle. The NoSQL databases include MongoDB, Cassandra, and Elastic Search.

 Full-stack web development with Vue and ASP.NET 

In this section, we will look into the technical aspects of full-stack web development using Vue and ASP. NET Core. 

 1. Vue.js 

Vue.js is a javascript framework for creating a user interface for web applications. It is incrementally adaptable, where you can integrate Vue into the existing portion of your application with a single CDN script reference. On the other side, you need supporting libraries and tools to build a complete Single-page Application (SPA). 

 2. ASP.NET 

ASP.NET is a Microsoft ASP.NET web development framework. It is a lightweight, modular application that also supports cross-platform. The applications built on ASP-NET core use the middleware pipeline principle, i.e., an H'I'TP request that invokes a middleware function. This function provides the set of instructions to handle the HTTP request. You can also chain multiple middleware functions as a pipeline to process the HTTP request. Dependency Injection is one of the core techniques used in ASP. NET Core and many official libraries, such as El• Core (Entity Framework) and ASP.NET Identity, uses Dl services.

3. C# language 

C # is an object oriented language that can build a secure and robust application in the.Net ecosystem. The applications include Windows client applications, distributed components, client-server applications, database applications, and so on. 

 4. Styling with Bootstrap and Sass 

Bootstrap-Vue is a component library provided by the Bootstrap CSS framework. It has many Vue.js components to render the application. SaaS is a professional grade CSS extension language. With SaaS, programmers can reuse CSS and write maintainable style sheets. 

 5. Databases 

PostgreSQL is an open source RDBMS that is compatible with any platform including ASP.NET Core and EF Core. Apart from PostgreSQL, you can also use SQL SERVER and it is a standard choice for ASP.NET applications.

6. Environment setup 

Nowadays, it is a necessity to install Node and npm (Node Package Manager) for front-end development. These are tools that provide the proficiency to build and execute Vue applications. Besides, npm is also necessary to install many client-side applications. 

        For IDE, you can install Visual Studio. Another tool available is the VS  Code, a cross-platform light-weight editor. There are many VS code extensions available and Vetur is one of the popular. It has features such as syntax highlighting, IntelliSense, error checking, and code snippets. Some other extensions are NuGet Packet Manager, extension, and Prettier. However, VS Code is not an IDE, it is a text editor that provides functionality similar to IDE. It is better to install Visual Studio if you arc using Windows.

         For the installation of backend tools, you need to install only two tools; ASP.NET core and PostgreSQL. 

         For Vue, technically, there is no need to do any installation. It is a JavaScript file that is placed on your webpage. Since multiple files and several libraries are involved in a real -world application, it is not wise to reference those pages manually. Here, we can overcome  this problem by using a technology called WebPack. It helps to bundle the client-side script file and also docs transpilation of files. To debug Vue applications, Google Chrome provides a useful plugin called Vue.js Chrome dev tool extension. It is easy to add this plugin to chrome. 

Deploying your web applications 

Many technologies are available to deploy web applications. Here we will look into three different scenarios: 

 1. Deploying on local server using NGINX and Docker 

NGINX acts as a web server in the deployment. Using the NGINX configuration filo, you can mention the server configuration details. Docker is a container management tool used to create, share, and deploy containers. With the help of the Docker file, you can create a Docker image for the web application along with the configuration file to start the NGINX web server. Upon creating the docker image, you can run your web applications on the local server. 

 2. Deploying on Heroku 

Heroku provides a cloud-based deployment service for your web application. To start with Heroku, you have to create an account (free), then install Heroku CLI - a command-line tool to deploy an application, and finally deploy your application.

3. Deploying on AWS S3 Bucket 

AWS is one of the best and biggest cloud service providers. You can deploy your application without installing your server or EC2 virtual machine instance. Here, you can create a bucket and add files to your bucket by providing the right set of permission.

Tutorials and courses 

1.Spring boot developer training 

This course provides hands-on experience with Spring Boot and its features that include au to-configuration, Spring data, Actuator, Spring Boot testing, and more. Upon completion of the course, you will be able to develop enterprise-ready applications. 


2.Learn React.js 

With this course, you will develop a good understanding of React.js, and its essential concepts such as JSX, props, state, and a lot more. 

3.Aurelia training 

This course makes you an expert in Aurelia by focusing more on hands-on learning 

4.Learn how to build Spring Boot and Angular Apps using J Hipster 

With this course, you will be able 10 learn how 10 build applications using  J Hipster with the latest technologies  such as Spring Boot, Angular, and so on. 

5.Learn full-stack Vue, .NET Core, PostgreSQL web development 

 In this course, you will learn full-stack web development using Vue.Net Core, and PostgreSQL. 

6.Maria DB training courses 

Maria DB training courses provide high quality, in-depth courses that help you to gain MariaDB database skills. These training courses provide presentation copies and hands-on lab experience. 

7.MongoDB courses 

The University of Mongo DB provides a different set of online courses from basics to the advanced level. The university contains MongoDB courses for specific programming languages.