React Next.js Node API AWS - Build Scaling MERN Stack App (Udemy.com)
Learn to build highly scalable MERN Stack app with AWS for Storage (S3) Email (SES) Hosting (EC2) IAM and more
Created by: Ryan Dhungel
Last updated February 2024
What you will learn
- Learn React JS (Frontend) Web Development
- Learn to use Next Js - A React Framework for Production Apps
- Learn Node JS API (Backend) Development
- Learn to Build Highly Scalable App
- Learn to use AWS S3 (Simple Storage Service) for File Uploads
- Learn to use AWS SES (Simple Email Service) for Sending Emails
- Learn to use AWS EC2 (Elastic Compute Cloud) for Hosting your App in the Cloud
- Learn to use AWS Route 53 for Domain/DNS Management
- Learn to use AWS IAM (Identity & Access Management)
- Learn to write custom rules/policy fo accessing AWS services
- Learn to use Mongo Atlas as a Managed Database in the Cloud
- Learn to build SEO React Apps with Next Js
- Learn to Build Real World Full Stack / MERN Stack Apps from Scratch
- Learn to Implement Secure JWT Based Authentication System
- Learn to Perform CRUD (create read update delete)
- Learn to Resize Image Client Side
How it compares
Against the other 173 rated Udemy courses in React on CourseDuck:
- Rating3.7 out of 5higher than 1% of them
- Reviews313#108 of 174 by number of reviews
- Length24.9 hourslonger than 69% of them
- Last updatedFebruary 2024more recently than 50% of them
Course Description
Master the art of building a highly scalable real world project using MERN Stack for a new startup that will scale infinitely. I will demonstrate how you could launch a project that will have a solid architecture to grow in future to be used by potentially millions of users.
Tech stack
We will be using React and NextJS (React Framework) in the client side.
We will build an API/server using Node Express MongoDB.
We will use AWS services such as S3 for files storage, SES for sending emails and EC2 for cloud hosting IAM for Identity and access management Route 53 for domain management along with custom rules/policy.
We will use Mongo Atlas as Managed Database Service in the cloud.
What we will build?
Build a startup project inspired by a successful real world app (discussed more in the lectures) where multiple users can login and post/manage contents they submit.
While building similar project, we will add few improvements to make it infinitely scalable and easier to maintain
Aim for low cost of operation and implement some functionalities to make much easier, fun and engaging for users to use.
Aim of the project
Target millions of potentials users to use and engage with our app
Users could be anyone.. who finds a course, video or articles online... likes it and wants to share
The links they share will also be available in their dashboard for update/delete
A user could be someone who is a content creator like me... instructors, youtubers, blog and tutorial writers, book authors etc
Users will signup/signin to our app to post/share/like the links/urls
Users will do this to get free traffic... to get people's attention... sharing links for free
Overview of the project
Login/Register System
Need a MongoDB that scale infinitely. We will use Mongo Atlas for this requirement.
Need a massive storage system that scale infinitely to store user uploaded image files. We will use AWS S3 (Simple Storage Service) for this requirement.
You never have to worry about how to manage millions of user uploaded files... let AWS take care of that! S3 pricing is the lowest in the market for storing infinite amount of data that is readily available worldwide throughout AWS data centers globally.
Need robust email service for sending emails for hundreds of thousands of users. We will use AWS SES (Simple Email Service) for this requirement.
You never have to worry about how to send email to millions and pay higher price ... let AWS take care of that! their rate of SES is the lowest in the market.
We will be using AWS EC2 (Elastic Compute Cloud) for hosting our backend NodeJS API and React/Next JS frontend, all within one instance.
Keep the cost as low as possible by using AWS services for storage, email and hosting.
The biggest issues of scaling web apps are storage and database scaling. That part will be handled by AWS. So we as a developer don't have to worry.
Our aim is to enable just 1 or 2 developer to maintain the entire project and continuously grow in future.
Clean simple and easy to maintain project architecture
Extremely simple architecture that is easy to maintain and scale
Separate backend API and frontend built with react/nextjs for easy development, code maintenance and deployment
Keep the frontend as simple as possible
Scenario 1 > You create a page in react to do certain task. For example it fetch the data from your API/Server and put that data on the web page for user to see. Job done.
Scenario 2 > You create admin page to create a new post. For example to post the data to your API/Server and show the returned response of either success or error. Job done.
Keep the backend API as simple as possible
Scenario 1 > You have a GET route. For example '/api/posts'. You will receive a request from react/frontend for getting all posts from database.
You pass this request to a controller method. Controller method/function will make a query to database, get all posts and return back to react/frontend. Job done.
Scenario 2 > You have a POST route. For example '/api/create/post'. You will receive data from react/frontend to create a new post. You pass that data to a controller method.
Controller method/function will save that data in database and return the success response, which will be sent back to react. Job done.
This is the logic of our app or basically any web app out there. The cycle of requests/responses. Request from frontend, Response from server.
Are you ready for this course?
If you are looking to utilize your existing knowledge of react and node to build a real world app that scales then this course is for you.
Based on this project you can build that next big thing that you have always dreamed of. Or you could be using this knowledge to help startups kick off their successful business ideas. The possibilities are endless.
Dream is dream unless you put an effort to make it real. Make your effort by taking this course. I will help you turn your dream to reality. Join me in this course and make it happen!
Instructor Details
- 3.7 Rating
313 Reviews
Ryan Dhungel
Ryan Dhungel is a Sydney-based full stack developer with 10+ years of coding and 8+ years of teaching. Over 416,000 students have taken his 40+ courses on Udemy, leaving 25,000+ reviews. He teaches modern full stack JavaScript, Next.js, and AI-assisted development with Claude Code — project-based, practical, no fluff.
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Reviews
By Chun Wei Liu on 4/17/2023
I don't recommend people as a beginner in Nodejs and React to take this course. The instructor is knowledgeable, but the teaching is disappointing and there are many points that can be improved. First, there is no comment while coding and no clear overview of what a block of code is doing, the instructor just keeps typing, which is very unclear. Second, the screen is small and hard to follow, I know other instructors who zoom in and zoom out while talking about some codes.
By Liberato on 11/10/2022
There is a lot of legacy code here that will drive you crazy if you are new to next.js or any of the other tools used. I do not recommend this course. I have been trying to code along the first few things and it is just awful. I have had to do research on why many things do not work. It is a good skill to learn but not what I was expecting.
By Galo Hernandez on 9/26/2022
Is totally outdated so everything will fall after 25% of the course. He is mixing a lot of technologies there so you will need a lot of background to understand the plenty of errors you will have. I just threw the towel after video 154. Don't waste your time like I did and better try to build smaller projects your way
By Sonny Brown on 2/2/2021
EDIT: Solid course. This seems a little old, but it is solid. The course flows nicely and Ryan is really good at explaining what's going on. It can be a little high level with Ryan pointing to other resources sometimes, but that's to be expected with a full blown app. You can't drill down on everything. But that's nice. I really like his level of explanation and leading you towards more self study. I hope one day he can rerecord the audio because I think this course would just be so popular if the sound had more polish. His teaching and understanding are so good and I wish it shined through the production but previewing the course you hear the echo and it is kind of a turnoff. But I bought in anyways and I'm very happy. Also, maybe when redoing the audio a little update on how things are done in nextjs as things seem to be different now. All that said, 5 stars, easily.
By Sourav dey on 1/21/2021
Hello sir! i saw your video on youtube. your teaching method is awesome and i like it very much. that's why i have enroll your course. if you had created any social media website using MERN , please give me the link and thank you very much for providing us these awesome projects.
By Sid on 1/17/2021
The course is clear, to the point and covers a lot of things viz: MERN, Few JS libraries like quill and infinite scroll, S3, SNS, EC2 ... I agree a few small things are missed out, but the course succeeds in marrying MERN and AWS together and also to point your domain to the AWS DNS. It really covers a lot of things. For a first time doer, its like super crazy! Another good thing about Ryan is, he teaches the simplest possible solution towards a problem! All in all, I am happy with the course. P.S. I saw a comment about copy paste. I am coding for 14 years, and copy paste isn’t something you wanna avoid. I see Ryan writing most of the code by hand and for a course project this big, a practical approach is always to take code written by yourself and modify it for the required functionality and he does exactly that.
By Suryakiran chodisetty on 9/19/2020
The teacher has no teaching skills at All. He has good knowledge on the subject but unable to deliver . Most of the time he copies and paste the code and some lectures are more than 35 mins at once.... . A complete waste of money and time Poor course ...
By Román on 7/11/2020
I have done 50% of the course so far. And I must say that its amazing. The instructor is using proper and clean code all the time, and a good structure. I bought it to learn next.js but I ended up learning a lot of express structuring too. Plus im learning some extra stuff there and there. I would have used some hashing algos like bcrypt instead of sha1 which is broken. But well, the rest of the course is pretty good so far. It has delivered me way more than I expected.
By joseph madariaga on 6/21/2020
an excellent teacher, i love his courses, i did not finished this course yet, but he deserve 5 stars, you must take this course if you want to make something professional one day, aws is amazing btw, mern is so powerful, this course is well designed
By Kay Do on 3/5/2020
This is my third course from Ryan and I learn new things every course. He has also improved his teaching styles over the time. What makes Ryan stand out from the rest of Udemy instructors is that he always answers student's questions and listens to their requests such as factored the code to async/await from the callback hell,... There is one common downside I see in this course as the others that the main purpose of React is re-usable components. I see many repeatable code that could be refactored into a single component and re-use it in many pages. Another problem is state management, the project at this size should be used with Redux or Hook/Context API. Again this course is not for beginner, you should take a shorter beginner course from Ryan to get somethings out of this course.
Quality Score
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Overall Score : 74 / 100












