Creating an Express server for React-Native

In this tutorial, we will learn how to create an Express server for a React-Native app and use MongoDB as the database. We will be using Express.js, a popular web application framework for Node.js, and MongoDB, a NoSQL database, to build the server and database for our app.

Setting up the project

First, we need to set up our project by creating a new directory and initializing it with a package.json file. Open your terminal and navigate to the directory where you want to create the project. Then run the following commands:

        
            mkdir react-native-express-server
            cd react-native-express-server
            npm init -y
        
    

Installing dependencies

Next, we need to install the necessary dependencies for our project. We will be using Express.js for our server and the mongoose package to interact with the MongoDB database. Run the following commands in your terminal to install the dependencies:

        
            npm install express mongoose
        
    

Creating the server

Now that our project is set up and we have installed the necessary dependencies, we can start building our Express server. Create a new file named server.js in the root of your project and add the following code to it:

        
            const express = require('express');
            const app = express();
            const port = 3000;

            app.get('/', (req, res) => {
                res.send('Hello World!');
            });

            app.listen(port, () => {
                console.log(`Server running at http://localhost:${port}`);
            });
        
    

Connecting to MongoDB

Now that we have our server set up, we need to connect it to a MongoDB database. First, make sure you have MongoDB installed on your machine. If not, you can download it from the official website and follow the installation instructions.

Once MongoDB is installed, we can use the mongoose package to connect our server to the database. Add the following code to the server.js file to connect to MongoDB:

        
            const mongoose = require('mongoose');

            mongoose.connect('mongodb://localhost/mydatabase', { useNewUrlParser: true, useUnifiedTopology: true });

            mongoose.connection.on('connected', () => {
                console.log('Connected to MongoDB');
            });
        
    

Conclusion

That’s it for part 1 of this tutorial! We have set up our project, installed the necessary dependencies, created an Express server, and connected it to a MongoDB database. In part 2, we will learn how to create routes and handle requests in our server. Stay tuned for the next part!