What is a monorepo?

When I first joined Shutterstock around two and a half years ago, I was unaware of the challenges of managing a repository that has over 100 collaborators. This was my first contact with the concept of a monorepo: a singular repository containing a multitude of different projects. Water cooler talk with my collegues centered around how Google managed billions of lines of code into a single repo. The idea being that centralizing code can lead to more granular deployments and sharing code with ease.

The reality however was that managing a monorepo is in itself a rare expertise that is…

Why host MERN apps on Vercel?

The MERN stack is at a crossroads: it is still a hugely popular stack behind a lot of production applications but it’s popularity is being attacked by the Jamstack. Sometimes it makes sense to refactor an application to migrate it to a framework like Next.js or Gastby but that can be a huge task.

However, if you don’t have the time or ressources for such a big migration, you can still get a lot of benefits like preview deployments and serverless functions if you host your MERN app on Vercel. In this tutorial, we will show you how to adapt…

Jamstack mentality

The React and web development community has witnessed in recent years the rise in popularity of frameworks that embrace the Jamstack ideas. These platforms offer the promise of more performant web pages by using a variety of techniques. While Gatsby has built an amazing set of tools dedicated to generating static sites with ease, Next.js has focused on offering flexibility in how it fetches data and renders pages.

While both of these platforms have their strengths and weaknesses, it is important to establish a strong data fetching strategy in any project. Next.js …

AWS Lambda with Serverless Framework

AWS has always been the leading provider of serverless services. The most famous service they offer in their serverless lineup is by far AWS Lambda. Lambda provides an unique opportunity to simplify how we think about Micro-Services. However, let’s get down to business and see how we can use it to get a fast, simple and inexpensive Express API deployed online.

Setting up

The first thing needed is an AWS account. If you do not have one yet, you will need to follow these instructions to get access to the services. AWS can give the impression of not being easy to use…

Vercel Serverless Functions

Vercel, the company behind Next.js and the SWR fetching library, has a nice serverless offering. They recently came out with zero configuration deployments. These deployments open the door to really fast project setup and deployments. Today, in this first tutorial we will cover how to set up a Typescript REST API using Vercel Serverless Functions with minimal overhead.

Setting up

We first need to install the Vercel CLI and log in. Be sure you have an account at Vercel.

yarn global add vercelvercel login

The login step will require you to enter your email and follow the instructions. …