Book Image

RESTful Web API Design with Node.js 10 - Third Edition

By : Valentin Bojinov
Book Image

RESTful Web API Design with Node.js 10 - Third Edition

By: Valentin Bojinov

Overview of this book

When building RESTful services, it is really important to choose the right framework. Node.js, with its asynchronous, event-driven architecture, is exactly the right choice for building RESTful APIs. This third edition of RESTful Web API Design with Node.js 10 will teach you to create scalable and rich RESTful applications based on the Node.js platform. You will be introduced to the latest NPM package handler and understand how to use it to customize your RESTful development process. You will begin by understanding the key principle that makes an HTTP application a RESTful-enabled application. After writing a simple HTTP request handler, you will create and test Node.js modules using automated tests and mock objects; explore using the NoSQL database, MongoDB, to store data; and get to grips with using self-descriptive URLs. You’ll learn to set accurate HTTP status codes along with understanding how to keep your applications backward-compatible. Also, while implementing a full-fledged RESTful service, you will use Swagger to document the API and implement automation tests for a REST-enabled endpoint with Mocha. Lastly, you will explore some authentication techniques to secure your application.
Table of Contents (16 chapters)
Title Page
Copyright and Credits
Packt Upsell
Contributors
Preface
Index

Chapter 4. Using NoSQL Databases

In the last chapter, we implemented a sample application exposing a read-only service that provided catalog data. For the sake of simplicity, we introduced a performance bottleneck in this implementation by using file storage. This storage is not suitable for web applications. It relies on 33 physical files, preventing our application from servicing heavy loads, as file storage lacks multitenant support due to disc I/O operations. In other words, we definitely need to look for a better storage solution, which scales easily, when needed, following the demands of our REST-enabled application. NoSQL databases are now heavily used in web and in cloud environments, ensuring zero downtime and high availability. They have the following advantages over traditional transactional SQL databases:

  • They support schema versions; that is, they can work with object representations rather than filling the object state based on definitions of one or several tables.
  • They are extensible...