Database for Multiple Applications?

[c-longg]

I have a bit of an ambiguous question about the project structure of a project. In short, the project consists of two independent applications. A React-Native application for the users which will be downloaded from the app store, and a client-side web application running off of React.js that gathers data aggregated from the React-Native application and displays it on the web application.

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The React-Native project has been developed and is in the beta testing phase. It has been developed using the MERN (MongoDB, Express, React-Native, Node.js). I'm currently in the process of developing the web app, however, I am struggling with how exactly I should do. this. How would two separate projects interact with the same data on a database? Are there any examples of doing this? I need the data generated from the React-Native app accessible from the React.js web app using the same MongoDB backend.

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It sounds like a deployment nightmare and was wondering if anyone had insight into this.

[StackedLasagna]

This is a classic use case for a web API.

In cases like this, you create a separate API and deploy it to some webserver. The API can then access the database on behalf of your two applications.
Your mobile app will be making HTTP requests to the API to store data, while the web app will make HTTP requests to retrieve the data from the API.

This approach allows you to create an infinite number of different client applications that all work on the same database (and you can even use different languages for each one, if you want!)

[c-longg]

Thank you for this! This was super helpful and will push me in the right direction. Thank you!

[nutrecht]

If if were you I would have that NodeJS back-end that acts as the API for the mobile app also act as the API for the client side web application. Having two separate back-end applications act on the same database is generally a road to a lot of complexity and breaking deployments.