learning feathers

We chose to learn Feathers after getting a brief introduction to this minimal web application framework from a former WDI student

Feathers makes it easy to create scalable REST APIs and real-time applications.

Developers use it because it's easy to understand and allows quick generation of full-stack apps.

Sails.js, Derby, Meteor are among the top 15 alternatives listed for 2019. (sources: https://www.slant.co/options/14594/alternatives/~feathersjs-alternatives https://feathersjs.com/comparison)

The founders of Feathers (David Luecke and Eric Kryski), wanted to solve the issue of apps becoming overly complex when using MVC frameworks. They started to explore different approaches to building web applications in 2010 and since then have found an efficient solution with the creation of Feathers. (source: https://blog.feathersjs.com/why-we-built-the-best-web-framework-you-ve-probably-never-heard-of-until-now-176afc5c6aac)

The documentation was really easy to follow. After creating apps with Express, we found that Feathers greatly expedited and simplified the process of creating apps--specifically, authentication, CRUD, controllers and routes.

We created a simple chat app using NeDB and the frontend framework of Feathers and future steps would be to implement Feathers using React and MongoDB.

We did not run into conceptual hurdles when learning Feathers because it simplifies a framework that we were already familiar with.

The Basics and Chat Application sections found here: https://docs.feathersjs.com/guides/readme.html The following Github repo: https://github.com/feathersjs/feathers-chat

What is a hook and why is it useful? Walk me through the steps of creating an app using Feathers. What is a service?

This project uses Feathers. An open source web framework for building modern real-time applications.

Getting up and running is as easy as 1, 2, 3.

1. Make sure you have NodeJS and npm installed.

2. Install your dependencies

   cd path/to/feathers-basics; npm install
   

3. Start your app

   npm start
   

Simply run npm test and all your tests in the test/ directory will be run.