small projects do not need a middle tier.
the backend express or koa can directly provide data. The api front end calls api to get the data

in response to your problem, let me talk about our current practice:
1, we think that href= is too heavy and useless. We directly use koa2 to build the backend, because Node.js is asynchronous and non-blocking. Therefore, the performance is still better; However, there are a lot of articles about the comparison between Node.js and PHP, which can be found to see that different test samples are different from the environment.
2, the API provided by the backend is Restful, there is no intermediate layer, and the front end is called directly.
3, you can learn . A large number of SQL operations are packaged, which are similar to Ruby's ides.rubyonrails.org/active_record_basics.html" rel= "nofollow noreferrer" > ActiveRecord .
hopes to help you.

doesn't the complete separation of the front and rear ends mean that the backend can just provide api, front-end calls? why do you need an intermediate layer? I think the front and rear ends are separated and rendered directly on the client rather than on the server.

nodejs's high concurrency performance is very good. Middleware is also available for databases. For example, sails.js 's waterline, does not require you to write sql statements yourself

the front and rear ends are separated. If the project is small, you can directly call the back-end API, as long as you can provide API,. It doesn't matter what language you use.