harrywynnwill/express-API

Learning express by building a restful API using Mongo

#Express api

Interact with the restful api here https://car-restful-api.herokuapp.com/api/cars using Postman!

Learning Express.js

####Installation instructions $ git clone git@github.com:harrywynnwill/express-API.git

$ cd express-API

$ npm install

$ mongo

$ mongod in a new tab

$ nodemon ./server.js localhost 8080

###NOTES

#####1 Define node packages

{
    "name": "node-api",
    "main": "server.js",
    "dependencies": {
        "express": "~4.0.0",
        "mongoose": "~3.6.13",
        "body-parser": "~1.0.1",
        "mongodb": "^2.2.10",
    }
}

express is the Node framework

mongoose is the ORM to communicate with MongoDB

body-parser will let us post with HTTP request

mongodb is the databaseg

"devDependencies": {
  "nodemon": "^1.10.2"
},

nodemon allows us to make changes to the app while server is running.

#####2 Install the dependencies

$ npm install

#####3 setting up the server see server.js

The base setup - pull in the various packages define our express app

Route setup - need an instance of router to define routes for the api

finally the app listens to the port then our app is live.

#####4 start the server nodemon ./server.js localhost 8080 start the server

visit the address in a browser.

#####5 setup account with modulus.io

setup an account with modulus.io and create a db

#####5b setup mongoDB

$ brew install mongodb

$ mongod starts mongodb

#####6 Create the model

create a file in a folder called models in the file add the schema for the DB

#7 Route middleware

Add middleware to the server to show that a request has been sent to our API

next() makes sure we go to the next routes and dont stop here

#7 creating post request

router.route('/model') define the route .post(function(req, res){... create an instance of the model in the function and set the request body to the key defined in the Schema

var model = new Model(); model.name = req.body.name;

then save the instance

model.save(function(err){...

add a function to return the error if (err) res.send(err);

else return a message in json that the instance was saved

res.json({ message: created});

});

});