8. Creating a RESTful API | Web Development with MongoDB and NodeJS

Sign In Start Free Trial

Book Overview & Buying
Table Of Contents

Web Development with MongoDB and NodeJS - Second Edition

By : Mithun Satheesh, Bruno Joseph D'mello, Jason Krol

4.3 (6)

Web Development with MongoDB and NodeJS

4.3 (6)

By: Mithun Satheesh, Bruno Joseph D'mello, Jason Krol

Overview of this book

Node.js and MongoDB are quickly becoming one of the most popular tech stacks for the web. Powered by Google's V8 engine, Node.js caters to easily building fast, scalable network applications while MongoDB is the perfect fit as a scalable, high-performance, open source NoSQL database solution. Using these two technologies together, web applications can be built quickly and easily and deployed to the cloud with very little difficulty. The book will begin by introducing you to the groundwork needed to set up the development environment. Here, you will quickly run through the steps necessary to get the main application server up and running. Then you will see how to use Node.js to connect to a MongoDB database and perform data manipulations. From here on, the book will take you through integration with third-party tools for interaction with web apps. It then moves on to show you how to use controllers and view models to generate reusable code that will reduce development time. Toward the end of the book, we will cover tests to properly execute the code and some popular frameworks for developing web applications. By the end of the book, you will have a running web application developed with MongoDB and Node.js along with it's popular frameworks.

Preface

Preface

What this book covers

What you need for this book

Who this book is for

Conventions

Reader feedback

Customer support

Free Chapter

1. Welcome to JavaScript in the Full Stack

1. Welcome to JavaScript in the Full Stack

A short introduction to Node.js

npm – the Node Package Manager

Sharing and reusing JavaScript

A simple server with Node.js

The NoSQL movement

A short introduction to MongoDB

Node and MongoDB in the wild

What to expect from this book

Summary

2. Getting Up and Running

2. Getting Up and Running

Installing Node.js

Installing MongoDB

Writing your first app

Adding the application code

Summary

3. Node and MongoDB Basics

3. Node and MongoDB Basics

A JavaScript primer

The basics of Node.js

Installing modules using npm

The basics of MongoDB

Additional resources

Summary

4. Introducing Express

4. Introducing Express

Web application frameworks

What is Express.js?

Building a complete web application

Using and understanding middleware

The configure module

Routers and controllers

Custom middleware

Handlebars as view engines

Summary

5. Templating with Handlebars

5. Templating with Handlebars

Templating engines

Server-side and client-side templating

Views

Layouts

Partial views

The basics of Handlebars

Handlebars helpers

Rendering the views

Summary

6. Controllers and View Models

6. Controllers and View Models

Controllers

View models

Updating the home controller

Updating the image controller

Helpers for reusable code

Iterating on the UI

Summary

7. Persisting Data with MongoDB

7. Persisting Data with MongoDB

Using MongoDB with Node.js

Introducing Mongoose

Defining the schemas and models

Adding CRUD to the controllers

Iterating by adding an image removal capability

Refactoring and improvements

Summary

8. Creating a RESTful API

8. Creating a RESTful API

What is an API?

What is a RESTful API?

Introducing Postman REST Client

Creating a basic API server

Responding to GET requests

Receiving data – POST and PUT requests

Removing data – DELETE

Consuming external APIs from Node.js

Summary

9. Testing Your Code

9. Testing Your Code

The tools of the trade

Writing and running your first test

Testing the application

Spy and stub everything!

Summary

10. Deploying with Cloud-Based Services

10. Deploying with Cloud-Based Services

Cloud versus traditional hosting

An introduction to Git

Deploying your application

Summary

11. Single-Page Applications with Popular Frontend Frameworks

11. Single-Page Applications with Popular Frontend Frameworks

What is a Single-Page Application?

Why use a frontend framework?

Frontend development tools

Testing and test-driven development

Summary

12. Popular Node.js Web Frameworks

12. Popular Node.js Web Frameworks

Koa

Meteor

Sails

Hapi

Flatiron

Summary

Index

Index

Responding to GET requests

Adding a simple GET request support is fairly simple, and you've seen this before already in the app we built. Here is some sample code that responds to a GET request and returns a simple JavaScript object as JSON. Insert the following code in the routes section where we have the // TO DO: Setup endpoints ... waiting comment:

router.get('/test', function(req, res) {
    var data = {
        name: 'Jason Krol',
        website: 'http://kroltech.com'
    };

    res.json(data);
});

Just like we set up viewModel in Chapter 5, Templating with Handlebars, we create a basic JavaScript object that we can then send directly as a JSON response using res.json instead of res.render. Let's tweak the function a little bit and change it so that it responds to a GET request against the root URL (that is /) route and returns the JSON data from our movies file. Add this new route after the /test route added previously:

router.get('/', function(req, res) {
    res.json(json);
});

Note...

Visually different images

CONTINUE READING

83

Tech Concepts

36

Programming languages

73

Tech Tools

Unlimited access to the largest independent learning library in tech of over 8,000 expert-authored tech books and videos.

Innovative learning tools, including AI book assistants, code context explainers, and text-to-speech.

50+ new titles added per month and exclusive early access to books as they are being written.

Web Development with MongoDB and NodeJS

Search

Your notes and bookmarks