Mongo plus Node - perfect together

To talk to Mongo we use Mongoose. Mongoose gives us a simple wrapper around Mongo with data validation and access to the Mongo commands.

A schema

A simple Mongoose schema might look something like this:

var mongoose = require("mongoose"),
  Schema = mongoose.Schema,
  message;

if (mongoose.models.Message) {
  message = mongoose.model("Message");
} else {
  var MessageSchema = new Schema({
    name: String,
    email: String,
    message: String,
  });

  message = mongoose.model("Message", MessageSchema);
}

module.exports = message;

You would save this in a file called message.js, and require it using require(‘./message.js’)

Exercise - Create a schema

• Install mongoose with:

  npm install mongoose --save

• Create a Person schema for based on the message schema above.
• Import it into your express app using require(‘./Person’)
• Restart express and verify that everything is still working.

Connecting to the database

To talk to Mongo, we need to connect to our database.

Start the mongo daemon running by typing mongod at the command line:

mongod;

Leave mongod running in a shell somewhere.

Now connect by adding something like the following near the start of your express app:

mongoose.connect("mongodb://localhost/database-name");
var db = mongoose.connection;
db.on("error", function () {
  throw new Error("unable to connect to database");
});

Exercise - Connect to Mongo

• Start mongod and connect to mongo.
• Restart your app. Verify all is well.

Create a route

Finally we need a route which will get all the people.

app.get("/people", function (req, res, next) {
  Person.find({}, function (err, people) {
    res.json(people);
  });
});

Exercise - Make your route

• Create a route to show all of the people.

Wow, you jut made an API!

Exercise - Create a show page

Create a route which shows a person with a particular ID. You will need to receive this id using somethig like:

router.get("/people/:id");

You can get hold of the parameter in the route function using:

req.params.id;

Your code will look something like this:

  app.get('/people/:id', function (req, res, next) {
    Product.findOne({_id: req.params.id}, function(err, product) {
      res.json(product);
    });
  };