RESTful CRUD API using Express.js, Node.js and mongoDB

In this article, we will discuss how to create a RESTful CRUD API using Express.js, Node.js, and mongoDB. This API will allow us to perform Create, Read, Update, and Delete operations on a database.

Setting up the Environment

First, we need to install Node.js and mongoDB on our system. Node.js is a runtime environment that allows us to run JavaScript code, while mongoDB is a NoSQL database that we will use to store our data.

Next, we need to create a new project directory and initialize it using npm. We can do this by running the following command in the terminal:

    mkdir restful-crud-api
cd restful-crud-api
npm init -y
    
    

Setting up Express.js

Next, we will install Express.js, a web application framework for Node.js, which will help us create our API. We can do this by running the following command in the terminal:

    npm install express
    
    

After installing Express.js, we can create a new file called app.js and initialize our Express application. In this file, we will define our routes for Create, Read, Update, and Delete operations.

Setting up mongoDB

Next, we need to install the mongoose package, which is an Object Data Modeling (ODM) library for mongoDB. This package will allow us to interact with our mongoDB database from our Node.js application. We can do this by running the following command in the terminal:

    npm install mongoose
    
    

After installing mongoose, we can establish a connection to our mongoDB database using the mongoose.connect() method. We will define our database schema and model using mongoose.Schema and mongoose.model() methods.

Creating Routes for CRUD Operations

Next, we will create routes for our CRUD operations. We can do this by defining routes for ‘/create’, ‘/read’, ‘/update’, and ‘/delete’ endpoints. We will use Express.js to handle these routes and interact with our mongoDB database using mongoose.

Conclusion

In this article, we learned how to create a RESTful CRUD API using Express.js, Node.js, and mongoDB. We set up our environment, installed necessary packages, created routes for CRUD operations, and interacted with our database using mongoose. With this API, we can now perform Create, Read, Update, and Delete operations on our data.