Learning Single-page Web Application Development: Build powerful and scalable single-page web applications using a full stack JavaScript environment with Node.js, MongoDB, AngularJS, and the Express framework

One really nice thing that author does before starting chapter 1 is that he provides a detailed list of his package.json file with the versions of various modules that make up the example application that he builds in the book. Similarly, he lists the version of WebStrom IDE that he used to write the code for the application. This avoids any ambiguities up-front.Chapter 1: The author goes into excruciating details about various architectural patterns MVM, MVVM, etc. etc. In my opinion, it is unnecessary in an introductory text like this. Less than a page would have been sufficient. On a positive note, the author does much better when he gets into discussing various software tools to create a Single Page Application (SPA).Chapter 2:It reviews the four technologies, Mongo DB, Express JS, Angular JS, and Node JS (i.e., the MEAN stack) from a 10,000 feet level. This is useful for someone with no experience in these software tools, but can be safely skipped by those with some experience or prior knowledge.Chapter3:One nice thing to know was the starter project Hackathon on Github. It is definitely something that I plan on looking at in more detail in near future. Next, he defines the sample project, Conference Speakers, that is used as a case study throughout the rest of the book and he does a fairly decent job. From hereon, the chapter dives into the code which is well-documented. A small disappointment is that the author chooses to use a third-party service for Mongo DB rather than walk through Mongo installation on his local machine. On the positive side, the use of Postman Google Chrome add-on is a nice touch.Chapter4:The author uses Embedded Javascript (EJS) instead of the Jade default server-side template engine. Personally, I much prefer Jade since I use HAML in my Ruby on Rails projects. Jade is similar to HAML, perhaps, better. What I found really confusing is his choice of Styling framework, called Responsive Boilerplate instead of Bootstrap which is what he uses for the client-side Angular JS templates. In my judgment, this was a poor choice and he would have been much better off keeping Bootstrap as the overall styling framework.Chapter5:It is a general and fast paced introduction to Angular. If you don't have any prior experience with Angular then it would be tough to get up to speed in it by reading just this chapter alone. You will need other resources for sure.Chapter6:It builds on the previous chapter and explains how to scaffold a starter application using Mean.js. The generated code is refactored and customized to create the final front-end code.Chapter7:This chapter deals with testing the code and provides detailed and useful configuration examples. Testing the MEAN stack is easier said than done, and therefore, the details are important.Chapter8:Finally, the author concludes with deploying the application on Heroku. This was the primary reason that I purchased the book. Frankly, I was a bit disappointed since the author races through it without providing much useful information. I am an experienced Heroku user and therefore approximately 80 percent of details were too basic for me. I was looking for more pertinent information on deploying a MEAN stack application on Heroku or at least links to appropriate articles.All in all, the book provides a fairly decent overview of how to build a Single Page Application using various tools with the following caveat: it is not the only book that you will need to learn to create Single Page Applications. Be prepared to invest into more books and/or video courses.