I'm currently working on a web application based on the popular MEAN stack (MongoDB, Express, AngularJS and Node.js). As I am still struggling with some aspects of node.js, I would like to ask for your advice and opinion on a major architecure decision of mine.
As I found Jade rather ugly (notation-wise) and did not want the server to render webpages (for cpu power saving reasons), I chose to always send back prepared html files/templates.
Example:
app.get('/', function(req, res) {
res.sendfile("public/index.html");
});
On the client side, I then initiate further Angular-JSON based communication to realize REST webservices to instantly get and fill in the needed data. Any reasonable arguments against this approach or maybe good points why I should be using a render engine on the server side?
Besides, does anyone know a good online tutorial for a multipage web application featuring user registration/validation, authentication process, rest webservices and so on? Something newbies can take a look at to get a feeling of how to structure a medium to large sized node.js application well? I've been googling for days now but feel that all tutorials I found were always missing essential ingredients or were rather "elementary".
Thanks in advance. Igor