Introduction To Mern Stack Download Mongodb Express Js

Introduction to MERN Stack | Download MongoDB & Express JS 🚀🍃 Our News App frontend is finally ready — it fetches, paginates, and displays articles beautifully with React. But right now, everything runs only in the browser. To make our News App truly production-ready, with a real database, a real API, and real user data, we need to step into the MERN Stack: MongoDB, Express.js, React.js, and Node.js.

In this tutorial, we will learn:

What is the MERN Stack?

MERN is a popular JavaScript full-stack technology bundle used to build dynamic, database-driven web applications end to end using a single language — JavaScript. The name is an acronym made up of four technologies:

Together, these four technologies let developers write both the frontend and the backend in JavaScript — which is exactly what makes MERN so beginner-friendly and efficient for projects like our News App.

Why Use MERN Stack for Our News App?

Right now, our News App articles live only inside component state — refresh the page and they're gone. With MERN, we can:

How Data Flows in a MERN Application

Understanding the request flow makes the rest of this series much easier to follow:

Step 1: Download MongoDB

MongoDB is the database layer of our stack. To get started:

Step 2: Verify Your MongoDB Installation

Once installed, open your terminal or command prompt and check the version to confirm MongoDB was installed correctly.

mongod --version

You can also start the MongoDB shell to connect to your local database:

mongosh

If you see version numbers and a connected shell prompt, your MongoDB installation is working correctly and ready for our News App backend.

Step 3: Set Up a Node Project

Before installing Express, we need a Node.js project. Create a new folder for your backend and initialize it with npm.

mkdir news-app-backend
cd news-app-backend
npm init -y

This creates a package.json file that will track all our backend dependencies — including Express.

Step 4: Download & Install Express.js

Express.js is installed as an npm package inside your Node project — there's no separate installer to download.

npm install express

Once installed, you'll see express listed under dependencies in your package.json file.

Step 5: Create a Basic Express Server

Let's write a minimal index.js file to confirm Express is working.

const express = require("express");
const app = express();
const PORT = 5000;
 
app.get("/", (req, res) => {
  res.send("Welcome to the News App Backend 📰🚀");
});
 
app.listen(PORT, () => {
  console.log(`Server running on http://localhost:${PORT}`);
});

Run the server with:

node index.js

Open http://localhost:5000 in your browser — if you see the welcome message, your Express server is up and running. 🎉

MERN Stack Components at a Glance

Features and Learnings:-