Review: FeedHenry uses Node.js to fortify mobile apps

Many proponents of agile development insist that teams need to be located in one place and have continuous verbal communication. There's a certain amount of truth to that, and I've seen it work amazingly well. On the other hand, many projects -- proprietary enterprise software as well as open source software projects, including outsourced projects -- are developed successfully by internationally distributed teams. GitHub is one of the most widely accepted version control services for globally distributed software development, and I think the way FeedHenry has integrated with GitHub is a step in the right direction. International teams often use a bug reporting and ticketing system, as well as a source code control system. It would be useful for FeedHenry to integrate with one of those, too.

API management and MBaaS
MBaaS is a small part of FeedHenry's bag of tricks. Nevertheless, FeedHenry offers a strong mobile back-end service. Part of what makes it scalable is the use of Node.js, which I discussed above. Further, FeedHenry uses MongoDB for its data store, which is also highly scalable. FeedHenry's servers typically don't even break a sweat under Black Friday-level loads.

FeedHenry back-end code is relatively simple, if you understand Node.js. Here's an example main (application.js) from the automatically generated Welcome app:

var mbaas = require('fh-mbaas-express');
var express = require('express');

// Securable endpoints: list the endpoints which you want to make securable here
var securableEndpoints = ['hello'];

var app = express();
app.use('/sys', mbaas.sys(securableEndpoints));
app.use('/mbaas', mbaas.mbaas);

app.use('/cloud', require('./lib/cloud.js')());

// You can define custom URL handlers here, like this one:
app.use('/', function(req, res){
  res.end('Your Cloud App is Running');
});

// Important that this is last!
app.use(mbaas.errorHandler());
var port = process.env.FH_PORT || process.env.VCAP_APP_PORT || 8001;
var server = app.listen(port, function(){
    console.log("App started at: " + new Date() + " on port: " + port);
});

You'll note the lack of explicit asynchronous code in this example, yet it's highly scalable stuff. You'll also recognize the use of the open source Express Web application framework.