Building a Meme Generator with RedwoodJS — the JavaScript Answer to Rails

When I first heard about RedwoodJS, I thought it was just another front-end JavaScript framework. I wondered whether it would it be like React or more like Angular. As it turned out, I didn’t have a clue what RedwoodJS was, but now I can’t wait to build more projects using it.

What is RedwoodJS?

RedwoodJS is a full-stack, serverless JavaScript framework. It is the JavaScript answer to Rails or Django. It uses the Jamstack approach to build an application with both front-end and back-end code. It also uses popular frameworks and libraries to accomplish this:

• React
• GraphQL
• Prisma

Using RedwoodJS allows you to build full-stack applications quickly. The Redwood CLI generates boilerplate code for anything you need, including scaffolding pages, SDLs, and services based on your data schema. And you really don’t have to think much about the database, so it works well for React developers unfamiliar with back-end code.

To dig into the details of how RedwoodJS works, consider the example of a meme generator. The meme generator allows users to create a meme based on a random image from imgflip.com. First users will need to register for an account. Then they will add text to the image. When they are done, they can click a button to save the image and store the user email and the image URL in a database. Users will view all submitted…