What JAM Stack Is

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The term itself was coined by Netlify co-founder Mathias Biilmann to refer to the solution stack of JavaScript, APIs, and markup. JAM stack focuses on the front end build, eschewing server-side functions as much as possible. The three elements are: • JavaScript: JAM stack JS resides on the client-side, handling responses and requests. Because this approach involves a style of build over specific technologies, the “J” in JAM stack can take many forms: pure JavaScript, a library like Vue.js, or even front-end frameworks like React. • APIs: Server-side processes and database commands are implemented vis API, which is accessed by JS-driven HTTP calls. JAM stack is API agnostic in that it simply does not care where yours comes from. You can use any of the bazillion pre-packaged APIs out there or custom-build your own. • Markup: This is the part users actually see when they access your site or app. These days there are all kinds of open source build tools (Grunt, Webpack, Gulp) — not to mention static site generators (Gatsby, Spike, Hugo) aggregating them into convenient platforms — to make creating templated markup stupid easy. Once you’ve actually built that JAM stack-based opus, you, of course, want to place it at the very front edge of the internet event horizon. There are fantastic git-centric hosting services that allow continuous deployment — meaning that you can simply push your app, and any subsequent changes, to GitHub, and the service will automatically build the site from source and deploy it. This is essentially how GitHub Pages works. And, since JAM stack architecture also couples beautifully with high-availability, high-performance nature of content delivery network distribution, be sure to shop for a provider that gives good CDN.