Create Your Own Full Stack YouTube Clone with React, MongoDB, Express.js, and Node.js for 2024

In this tutorial, we will walk you through the process of building your own full stack YouTube clone using React, MongoDB, Express.js, and Node.js. By the end of this tutorial, you will have a fully functional YouTube clone that allows users to upload, view, and comment on videos.

Step 1: Setting up the project

To start, we will create a new directory for our project and navigate into it:

mkdir youtube-clone
cd youtube-clone

Next, we will initialize a new Node.js project using npm:

npm init -y

Step 2: Setting up the backend

We will start by setting up the backend using Node.js and Express.js. First, we need to install the necessary dependencies:

npm install express mongoose multer

Next, we will create a new file called server.js where we will set up our backend server:

touch server.js

In the server.js file, we will require the necessary modules and set up the Express app:

const express = require('express');
const mongoose = require('mongoose');
const multer = require('multer');

const app = express();

// Connect to MongoDB
mongoose.connect('mongodb://localhost/youtube-clone', { useNewUrlParser: true })
  .then(() => console.log('Connected to MongoDB'))
  .catch(err => console.error(err));

// Set up file storage using Multer
const storage = multer.diskStorage({
  destination: (req, file, cb) => {
    cb(null, 'uploads/');
  },
  filename: (req, file, cb) => {
    cb(null, file.originalname);
  }
});

const upload = multer({ storage: storage });

app.listen(3000, () => {
  console.log('Server is running on port 3000');
});

Step 3: Setting up the frontend

Next, we will set up the frontend using React. First, we need to install the necessary dependencies:

npx create-react-app client

Next, we will navigate into the client directory and install some additional dependencies for our frontend:

cd client
npm install axios react-player

Step 4: Building the UI

Now that we have set up the backend and frontend, we can start building the UI for our YouTube clone. Inside the client/src directory, create a new folder called components and add the following files:

• Home.js
• Video.js
• Upload.js

In each of these files, we will create React components that will display the home page, individual video page, and upload page, respectively.

Step 5: Connecting the frontend to the backend

To connect the frontend to the backend, we will use Axios to make API calls from the frontend to the backend. In each of the frontend components, we will make API calls to fetch data from the backend.

Step 6: Testing the application

Finally, we can test our YouTube clone by starting both the backend and frontend servers. In one terminal, run the following command to start the backend server:

node server.js

In another terminal, navigate to the client directory and run the following command to start the frontend server:

npm start

Open your web browser and navigate to http://localhost:3000 to see your YouTube clone in action!

Congratulations! You have successfully built your own full stack YouTube clone using React, MongoDB, Express.js, and Node.js. Feel free to customize and expand upon this project to make it your own.