Does it make sense to have a Node.js backend serving json to frontend for dapp?

Question

Currently, the architecture I am looking at is that the smart contract (SC) sits on the ethereum network, but it is a complex and multilevel contract system. Just navigating through the tiers of the smart contract platform is a lot of effort and I am considering making a node.js backend service that implements web3 to make the multi-level SC calls and return my needed data in a JSON RESTful response.

This was meant to reduce the amount of craziness that the frontend (vue.js) would have to handle in order to serve up the UI the data it needs.

Although, the blockchain has all the events created and I can use web3 to search back and populate the UI that way, but then I would also need to navigate through multi-level SCs to get the data I need.

Would it make more sense to have a fat Frontend UI that does event parsing and platform navigation, or to have a nodeJS backend that is opensource acting as a blockchain reader that handles that for me and then serves up everything in a pretty JSON for the UI?

Answer 1

Yes, it ended up being that this was extremely useful for a lot of readonly requests that you want to do from contracts. Due to my application, I had more than one interface consuming the data for a multi-contract ethereum smart contract platform so having the node.js api to navigate it and provide my end users a easy to digest api made it way simpler. I open sourced the node.js API so you can check it out at github.com/matryx/MatryxExplorer if you need ideas. I utilized IPFS as the storage mechanism –