56aint/build-your-own-api

Setting up an Express/Sequelize app

These steps are for creating an express app which uses sequelize to interact with a MySQL database. The steps assume you have MySQL running in a docker container on your machine. It also references the music-api. If you get stuck, it would be a good idea to check back there for examples. Use this as a bootstrap to set up your own app.

Remember: To be considered complete, you api should be able to perform all the CRUD actions.

Some simple database ideas

These ideas are intended to only require a single table. Feel free to try more complex ideas.

• A to-do api. Tasks are stored in a table, and have a status (todo, in-progress, done).
• A quiz questoin database, each question has a query and an answer.
• A top-trumps style database. Each card has a name, flavour text and a set of stats.

Repository Setup

• Create a new directory for the project on your computer
• Create a new README.md file in the root of you project
• Initialise a git repo in the new directory with git init
• Add an empty .gitignore file
• Create a repository for the project on Github
• Connect your locat repository to the remote GitHub repository
• Initialise a new NPM project in you project directory with npm init
• Add node_modules to your .gitignore file
• Indtall eslint-config-mcr-codes as a dev dependency, configure it according to these instructions

Application Setup

• Install express and sequelize as dependencies
• Set up your basic index.js and src/app.js similar to how you did in the Music API
  • src/app.js should configure and export a basic Express application.
  • index.js should call app.listen() and then console.log() the port that the app is listening on.
• Install dotenv and nodemon as development dependencies
• Add a start script to your package.json file with the following command: nodemon -r dotenv/config index.js. This uses nodemon to execute the index.js file with the environment variables loaded from a .env file.
• Create a scripts folder, and copy the create-database.js and drop-database.js scripts from the music-library
• Add a prestart script to your package.json. Set the command to node scripts/create-database.js. This will run before the npm start command, and will create your database if it doesn't already exist.
• Create a .env file with the following variables:
  • DB_PASSWORD=PASSWORD
  • DB_NAME=APP_NAME
  • DB_USER=root
  • DB_HOST=localhost
  • DB_PORT=3306
• Add your .env to your .gitignore
• Create a folder at src/models and add an index.js:
  • Require sequelize at the top of this file
  • Declare a function as setupDatabase. Declare a const and assign a new Sequelize() to it. Pass it the connection infomation from your .env
  • Still inside the funciton, call sequelize.sync({alter: true})
  • Have the function return an empty object for now.
  • At the bottom of the file, module.exports = setupDatabase()

At this point you should be able to run npm start in your terminal, and get a listening express server.

Test Environment Setup

• Install mocha, chai, and supertest as dev dependencies.
• Copy accross the test-setup.js from the music-api
• Add a .env.test with the same environment variables as your .env. Make sure to give your test database a different name.
• Add .env.test to your .gitignore
• Add a test script to your package.json file: mocha tests/**/*.test.js --opts .mocha.opts
• Add a pretest script to your package.json. Set the command to: node scripts/create-database.js test. Note that this time we pass the test option at the end of the command. This tells the script to load the variables from .env.test instead of .env.
• Add a posttest script, set the command to: node scripts/drop-database.js. This will delete your test database after your tests have finished running.

At this point, you should be able to run npm test in your terminal. Mocha should run and complain that there are not tests yet. Commit your work to github.