SparkHacks 2026

Back to the Backend

Objectives

Intro to backend devevlopment

Understand the importance of building backends

Exposure to Node.js + MongoDB

Walkthrough of a real implementation of a simple backend you can use for your projects

What’s a backend?

• A backend to a web application is server-side code

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• Simply put, this is code that is not ran on the browser–users do not run this code on their side

What’s a database?

Sql

NoSql

• A digital repository (place to store things) for data

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• Tons of different types of databases

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• One key differentiation for web-developers is SQL vs NoSQL DBs

Why MongoDB?

• Local vs cloud

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• Scalability

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• Very common in industry

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• Hackathon convenience—easy to use

GitHub Link

https://github.com/apras4/back-to-the-backend-code.git

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OR

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MongoDB Setup Guide

Server set up

Node.js: runtime environment that lets developers run code outside of the web browser

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Express: framework that simplifies having to write some of the code to handle HTTP requests

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Mongoose: a ODM library that makes it really simple to connect to MongoDB

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Cors: a way for browsers to protect themselves. We add a header in our server code to safely connect frontend and backend.

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Let’s take a look at the code

Models and Schema

Schema

Models

A template that outlines how the data document should be structured

Models are programming interfaces that we can use to interact with the DB

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HTTP Requests

GET

Read Data

POST

Create Data

PUT

Update Data

DELETE

Delete Data

Communication method between the frontend and backend

CRUD Operations

• CRUD database operations are used to directly change the database.

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• Since we’re using Mongoose, we get to use predefined functions to do these operations.

Mongoose Docs

Feedback Link!

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Before you go!

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Scan the QR code to learn about their platform:

Aedify.ai will be at SparkHacks! Join the workshop led by CTO Zhuo Chen to learn more about scalable deployment of web applications!

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