Brad Newman

Often I find myself without bandwidth and in need of interaction with an API for a front-end project I may be working on. Initially, I thought that I would be able to browse around Github and locate a repo that contained a quick and easy REST API I could spin up with node. It is true that I found many potential candidates. However, the projects I found were bloated with extra stuff that I really did not need or care about. When I am putting a schema together for a backend, the last thing that I am worried about is testing. On that note, is it really that hard to add testing packages later on in the process? Well, I think that is enough ranting from me. On to it.

A simple REST API with MongoDB interaction can be found here. Instructions on getting up and running are located below. Enjoy!

Table of Contents

Quick Start - Assuming you have MongoDB installed.

Installing MongoDB

Adding Your Own Schema

Available Endpoints

Importing Sample Data

Interaction

Installing MongoDB

If you have not already installed Mongo. You can find installs here:

MongoDB Site

Windows - After Install

If you are running Windows assure that you have the following environment variable: PATH=%PATH%;C:/Program Files/MongoDB/Server/3.2/bin/

Note: The path may vary depending on the current Mongo version.

Mac - After Install

You will need to set a Path variable in you .bash_profile in order to start Mongo from the command line.

  1. From the command line it is easier to locate your Mongo path for copy paste. Type: find / -name 'mongod'.
  2. Look for the path that ends with bin/mongod.
  3. Replace the path here with the path you just copied: echo "PATH=/your/path/here/bin/:$PATH" >> ~/.bash_profile . ~/.bash_profile

Adding Your Own Schema

Below I will show a brief example of how to add additional models to your schema. I have created an example schema for users. Feel free to skip to step 3 if you are not looking to add anything else.

Step 1

Create a mongoose model and schema in the server/models folder to represent the JSON structure you want to interact with.

Example Usage users.js:

import mongoose from 'mongoose';

const userModel = mongoose.model('user', new mongoose.Schema({
  email: { type: String, index: true },
  username: { type: String, required: true },
  firstName: { type: String },
  lastName: { type: String },
  permissions: {
    admin: { type: Boolean }
  }
}));

export default userModel

Step 2

Import your model into server/server.js and onto step 3.

Step 3

Serve the model in the server/server.js file.

restify.serve(router, userModel);

Step 4

Modify the config file here: server/config.js

const config = {
    'database': 'test', // Whatever you would like to name your database.
    'port': 3000,
    'host': 'mongoDB://localhost:27017/'
};

Running

Don’t forget to install packages:

npm install

Starting MongoDB:

Mac: npm run mongo-mac
Windows: npm run mongo-win

Run the server:

In a new terminal window.

npm run start-server

Available Endpoints

 GET http://localhost/api/v1/user/count
 GET http://localhost/api/v1/user
 POST http://localhost/api/v1/user
 DELETE http://localhost/api/v1/user

 GET http://localhost/api/v1/user/:id
 GET http://localhost/api/v1/user/:id/shallow
 PUT http://localhost/api/v1/user/:id
 POST http://localhost/api/v1/user/:id
 PATCH http://localhost/api/v1/user/:id
 DELETE http://localhost/api/v1/user/:id

Importing Sample Data

If you would like to import sample data.

Step 1

Assure that MongoDB is running, or you have run the npm run mongo-mac in another terminal window.

Step 2

From the command line run the following:

mongoimport --db test --collection users --drop --file sampleData.json --jsonArray

Note: replace the word test in the string above with whatever you have named your database.

Interaction

Need help building or interacting with your API? I highly suggest looking at Postman