What is LoopBack
LoopBack is a modern, full-featured Node.js framework aimed at speeding up development of RESTful APIs and client side integrations. With the help of LoopBack’s CLI (command line interface), even the novice programmer will be able to quickly define a RESTful API.
LoopBack has all the integrations you will need for databases (SQL and No-SQL based) and authentication, as well as full integration with StrongLoop Arc, which provides you with database visualization, application builds and deployments, scaling, and real-time monitoring.
LoopBack is built on Express
Express is arguably the most popular Node.js framework because of its “fast, un-opinionated, minimalistic” approach. It was created back in 2009 and now has over 5,000 commits and over 150 contributors.
LoopBack builds on top of Express and automates the building of RESTful API’s using conventional methods. At the same time you still have access to all of of Express’s underlying abilities. And who better to extend the capabilities of Express than its current maintainer, StrongLoop.
LoopBack is build from the ground up for APIs
LoopBack is laser-focused on the backend of software development. With just a few JSON files you can quickly build a RESTful data layer on top of your database. With the included Swagger UI, you can start testing your API calls immediately.
Another benefit: you can actually link up another RESTful endpoint and communicate with it exactly as you would with a database. This feature makes it easy to create a three-tiered microservice architecture, where your second tier, written in LoopBack, can speak to many other RESTful services on behalf of the client UI.
LoopBack has a small footprint
Loopback is very light on resources. Why does this matter? At Sharptop we pride ourselves in teaching programming to people who are just getting started. These students may not have the top-of-the-line equipment that seasoned developers use; LoopBack is light enough to start using on Cloud9 (our favorite free online IDE). This allows our programmers to be effective no matter what hardware they use.
LoopBack is industry backed
LoopBack and Express were already the leading enterprise-ready Node.js frameworks; now software giant IBM is throwing their weight behind them. We anticipate their products to only get better now that they have such a large corporate sponsorship.