Vincent Durmont

« Back

November 29, 2013

First REST API with Node, Express.js, Monk and MongoDB

One of my previous posts presented how to quickly build a Node-based webapp with a templating system. Today, let's use the same technology stack to build our first REST Web API.

In my job and my personal projects, I alternatively take the positions of frontend and backend developer. In order to separate the responsabilities of each part of the job, the best way is to define an interface. Providing a web API for a service enables us to plug in any frontend display (websites, mobile apps, etc.).

Technologies

Here is a quick presentation of the technologies used in this post, do not hesitate to check them out:

Scenario

In this post, I will build a simple bug tracker. A bug will be defined as a title, a date of creation, a status and the name of the assignee. Here is an example:

{
  "id": 42,
  "title": "Wrong format for the creation date",
  "creation": "2013-11-27T04:33:35Z",
  "status": "OPEN",
  "assignee": "Vincent"
}

We will then be able to create, read, update and delete bugs in the service.

Set up our express app

To start with, create a package.json file with the following dependencies and launch npm install.

{
  "name": "MyApp",
  "version": "0.0.1",
  "private": true,
  "dependencies": {
    "express": "3.4.4",
    "monk": "0.7.1"
  }
}

Start a MongoDB database (download here) with mongod --dbpath /tmp.

We will then create the main file for our webapp. Here are the endpoints which will be accessible:

In order to keep our app.js file small and clear, we just declare the endpoints and write our business logic in routes.js.

var express = require("express");
var routes = require("./routes.js");

var app = express();
app.use(express.bodyParser());

app.get("/", routes.getAll);
app.post("/", routes.create);
app.get("/:id", routes.get);
app.put("/:id", routes.update);
app.del("/:id", routes.del);

app.listen(3333);
console.log("Running on port 3333!");

The file routes.js contains all the business logic. It starts by importing a config.json file which contains the database information and establishes a connexion with the database by using Monk.

Then we execute the requests in the database to store, retrieve or remove the requested data.

{
  "host": "localhost",
  "dbname": "example"
}

 

var config = require("./config.json");
var monk = require("monk");
var db = monk(config.host + "/" + config.dbname);
var collection = db.get("bugs");

// Returns all the bugs
exports.getAll = function (req, res) {
  collection.find({}, function (err, bugs) {
    if (err) res.json(500, err);
    else res.json(bugs);
  });
};

// Creates a bug
exports.create = function (req, res) {
  var body = req.body;
  collection.insert(body, function (err, bug) {
    if (err) res.json(500, err);
    else res.json(201, bug);
  });
};

// Get a bug
exports.get = function (req, res) {
  var id = req.params.id;
  collection.findById(id, function (err, bug) {
    if (err) res.json(500, err);
    else if (bug) res.json(bug);
    else res.json(404);
  });
};

// Updates a bug
exports.update = function (req, res) {
  var id = req.params.id;
  var body = req.body;
  delete body._id;
  collection.findAndModify(
    { _id: id },
    { $set: body },
    { multi: false },
    function (err, bug) {
      if (err) res.json(500, err);
      else if (bug) res.json(bug);
      else res.json(404);
    }
  );
};

// Deletes a bug
exports.del = function (req, res) {
  var id = req.params.id;
  collection.remove({ _id: id }, function (err) {
    if (err) res.json(500, err);
    else res.json(204);
  });
};

Simply run npm install && node app.js and open a browser to http://localhost:3333. If you see an empty json array ([]), it's okay :)

If you want to test the service, use an HTTP Client (for example, the Google Chrome extension XHR Poster is perfect for testing an API).

Going further

The API was really easy to set up! But there is a lot of remaining problems like:

Download the code of this example