Sefism Full Stack Development Cheat Sheet

What it is

The Full stack development cheat sheet is the quick-revision companion to Sefism's Full stack development roadmap. It covers web foundations, React, the server, data modelling, APIs and auth, deployment and running a real product, in the same order as the roadmap.

Each concept is a short card: what it is, why it matters, an example or snippet where one helps, and the mistake people usually make. Because full stack work spans so many layers, the sheet is most useful as a map: when you are deep in the database and need to remember how CSRF works, it is one chapter away.

Four editions

The sheet comes in an edition for each stack the roadmap teaches:

• Next.js and PostgreSQL: React and the App Router, route handlers and server actions, SQL with Prisma. 58 concepts.
• MERN: React with Vite, Node.js and Express 5, MongoDB with Mongoose. 58 concepts.
• Django and React: React with Vite, Django and Django REST Framework, PostgreSQL and the Django ORM. 59 concepts.
• Spring Boot and React: React with Vite, Java and Spring Boot, PostgreSQL with Spring Data JPA and Flyway, and Spring Security. 65 concepts.

The web foundations, API, deployment and shipping chapters are shared, with a few stack-specific entries; the server and database chapters change with the edition.

Chapter by chapter

1. Web foundations: HTTP, HTML, CSS and JavaScript

How a request reaches a server, HTTP methods and status codes, semantic HTML and forms, Flexbox, Grid and responsive layout, JavaScript essentials, promises and async/await, the event loop, and the DOM, events and fetch.

2. Git, npm and React

Git branches and pull requests, npm and lockfiles, components and props, state, effects, forms and validation, and routing. The Next.js edition adds server and client components; the others add fetching API data in React and the Vite dev server with an API proxy.

3. The server side

• Next.js: route handlers, server actions, Node.js under Next.js, environment variables and secrets, schema validation, the proxy file (formerly middleware), and error handling and logging.
• MERN: Node.js modules, the event loop and async I/O, environment variables, Express routing, middleware, request validation and error handling.
• Django: virtual environments, projects and apps, URLs and views, the admin, serializers, ViewSets and routers, and settings with secrets.
• Spring Boot: the JDK with Maven or Gradle, Spring Initializr and auto-configuration, constructor injection, REST controllers, DTOs with Bean Validation, profiles and secrets, ProblemDetail errors, and CORS.

4. Data modelling

The relational editions share tables, keys and relationships, normalisation, joins and aggregates, indexes and EXPLAIN, transactions and constraints, then add their own ORM: Prisma schema, migrations and queries; Django models, QuerySets, select_related and prefetch_related; or JPA entities, Spring Data repositories, Flyway and fetch joins. The MERN edition covers documents and collections, embedding against referencing, queries and updates, indexes and explain(), the aggregation pipeline, Mongoose schemas, transactions and NoSQL injection.

5. APIs, authentication and caching

REST resource design, one consistent error shape, pagination and filtering, sessions and tokens, secure cookies and CSRF, password hashing, authorisation and roles, CORS, rate limiting and caching with Redis. The Spring edition adds the Spring Security filter chain.

6. Deployment, CI/CD, Linux and AWS

Shell, SSH and processes, config in the environment, Docker images and Compose, a reverse proxy with domains and HTTPS, core AWS services, GitHub Actions that test on every pull request and deploy on merge, and logs, uptime checks and backups. Spring adds Actuator health checks.

7. Ship a complete product

Scope and data model first, tests on the critical paths, safe migrations, backups you have restored, error tracking, background jobs and queues, what changes at ten times the users, and getting feedback from real users. Spring adds Testcontainers for integration tests.

Chapters link up to three library resources for depth, such as Full Stack Open, MDN Web Docs, the Django Tutorial, Spring Guides, MongoDB University and The Twelve-Factor App.

Rules of thumb worth remembering

Seven rules are shared, plus one per edition, alongside a 150-term glossary. Among the shared ones:

• Validate every input on the server, even when the form already validates it in the browser.
• Check authorisation on the specific record, not just that someone is signed in.
• Keep secrets in environment variables and out of the repository, the browser bundle and the logs.
• Deploy by hand once before automating it, so you know what the pipeline replaces.
• Measure before adding a cache, a queue or another service: most slowness is a missing index or an N+1 query.

The edition rules are practical one-liners, such as treating every Next.js server action as a public POST endpoint, or calling .lean() on Mongoose reads you only send as JSON.

How to use it with the roadmap

• After each stage: the seven chapters match the roadmap's seven stages one to one. Read the chapter and check every pitfall line.
• Before you ship: chapters 5 to 7 work as a pre-launch checklist: auth on every record, secrets out of the bundle, a restored backup, error tracking switched on.
• When you change stack: switch edition and read chapters 3 and 4 side by side with your old one to see how the same ideas look in the new framework.
• Before a technical conversation: chapters 1, 4 and 5 are the ones to reread, with ideas you should be able to explain aloud, such as the event loop, indexes, N+1 queries and sessions against tokens.

How it works on Sefism

Everything here is free to learn from. The public page lists every chapter title, with the first chapters open to read. Keeping the sheet uses credits, and new members get starting credits when they join. Adding the Full stack development roadmap to your dashboard (your first roadmap is free) opens this sheet with it. In the member area you can switch between the four editions.

Related on Sefism

• The Frontend development cheat sheet and Backend development cheat sheet for deeper chapters on either side
• The MongoDB cheat sheet if you are on the MERN stack
• Sixteen things that break a backend
• Defaults I would learn first as a software engineer

FAQ

Is this enough to learn full stack development? No. It is for revision. The roadmap and its picks do the teaching.

Which edition should I choose? The one matching the stack you chose on the roadmap. If you have not chosen yet, the editions are a quick way to compare how each stack handles the server and the database.

Does it cover deployment to platforms other than AWS? The deployment chapter covers Linux servers, Docker and a reverse proxy in general, plus core AWS services.