Creating REST API in Node.js with Express and MySQL

APIs are the way applications communicate with each other. And APIs are the way to make versatile applications.

One API and multiple frontends or multiple micro APIs and multiple front ends, there is no doubt that API development is the core of scalable and manageable applications.

In this post, we will talk about creating a REST API on Node.js with Express and MySQL.

First things first; important prerequisites for this article to follow up are:

Node.js - Platform for the API
MySQL - as Data Layer

First let's start with project initialization i.e. git, npm, etc.

npm i -S express

HTTP Server

Now we need to add express and related dependencies to get up and running with the HTTP server.

npm i -S express body-parser

Express is a framework for API development on Node.js; similar tools in this area are:

HapiJS
Koa

Now we set up the basic express app server with following server.js file:

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

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

app.listen(port, () => console.log(`Example app listening on port ${port}!`));

As you can see, like with the function call app.get

We are defining a Route on our server
The server will respond to GET calls for this Route
The Callback will handle it in the following way: (req, res) => res.send('Hello World!'); And for this route, the response will be Hello World String.

And if we write the same line as follows:

app.post('/', (req, res) => res.send('Hello POST World!'))

This is the same as GET; except with the .post method, the server with .post method will respond to POST requests on these Routes with string Hello POST World

You can send the same response to all HTTP methods with the .all method as:

app.all('/ping', (req, res) => res.send(new Date()))

Database Access & CRUD

As we are using MySQL Database here, we need to set up the database access for Node.js.

For that, we will need mysql package for Node.js. Let's go ahead and install the package as the main dependency

npm i -S mysql

After installing mysql, we can write our basic code to connect to the database and then get some data from a table. It can be written as follows:

const mysql = require('mysql');

// Get the Host from Environment or use default
const host = process.env.DB_HOST || 'localhost';

// Get the User for DB from Environment or use default
const user = process.env.DB_USER || 'root';

// Get the Password for DB from Environment or use default
const password = process.env.DB_PASS || '';

// Get the Database from Environment or use default
const database = process.env.DB_DATABASE || 'twitter_clone';

// Create the connection with required details
const con = mysql.createConnection({
  host, user, password, database,
});

const query = "SELECT * FROM tweets";

// make to connection to the database.
con.connect(function(err) {
  if (err) throw err;

  // if connection is successful
  con.query(query, (err, result, fields) => {
    // if any error while executing above query, throw error
    if (err) throw err;

    // if there is no error, you have the result
    console.log(result);
 });
});

Here we are making a connection to the database with mysql.createConnection function and then using the connection reference to fire a Select query to the Database with connection.query function.

In both functions, we are using callbacks with first error parameter which will tell us if any error occurred while executing the provided command. We can convert the above code to async/await or Promise style with the help of the following functions:

Connect as a Promise

// connect
const mysql = require('mysql');

module.exports = async (params) => new Promise(
(resolve, reject) => {
    const connection = mysql.createConnection(params);
  connection.connect(error => {
      if (error) {
      reject(error);
      return;
    }
    resolve(connection);
  })
});

Query as a Promise

// query
module.exports = async (conn, q, params) => new Promise(
(resolve, reject) => {
  const handler = (error, result) => {
      if (error) {
      reject(error);
      return;
    }
    resolve(result);
  }
  conn.query(q, params, handler);
});

Now we merge the basic express app, promise based mysql connection & query; the code to connect and the query should look like this:

const express = require('express')

const dbConfig = require('./dbConfig');
// ↑ exports = {user, password, host, databse}

const connection = require('./helpers/connection');
const query = require('./helpers/query');

const app = express()
const port = 3000;

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

app.get('/list', async (req, res) => {
  const conn = await connection(dbConfig).catch(e => {}) 
  const results = await query(conn, 'SELECT * FROM tweets').catch(console.log);
  res.json({ results });
})

app.listen(port, () => console.log(`Example app listening on port ${port}!`))

The above code will be following the following DB schema:

CREATE TABLE users(
    id int NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT,
    username varchar(15) NOT NULL,
    password varchar(32) NOT NULL,
    followers int DEFAULT 0,
    following int DEFAULT 0,
    tweets int DEFAULT 0,
    PRIMARY KEY (id)
);

CREATE TABLE following(
    id int NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT,
    user1_id int REFERENCES `users` (`id`) ON DELETE CASCADE ON UPDATE CASCADE,
    user2_id int REFERENCES `users` (`id`) ON DELETE CASCADE ON UPDATE CASCADE,
    PRIMARY KEY (id)
);

CREATE TABLE tweets(
    id int NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT,
    username varchar(15) NOT NULL,
    user_id int REFERENCES `users` (`id`) ON DELETE CASCADE ON UPDATE CASCADE,
    tweet varchar(140) NOT NULL,
    timestamp TIMESTAMP NOT NULL DEFAULT CURRENT_TIMESTAMP,
    PRIMARY KEY (id)
);
############################
# Some Random Data
INSERT INTO USERS(username, password) VALUE('pankaj', MD5('pankaj'));

INSERT INTO TWEETS(username, user_id, tweet) VALUE('pankaj', 1, 'Hello World!');

INSERT INTO TWEETS(username, user_id, tweet) VALUE('pankaj', 1, 'Hello World Again!');

Till now we have seen the basic arrangement of MySQL Functions. Let's take a brief look at how we can arrange our Express app efficiently.

Middleware

Middleware Functions are the functions that transform the server app functionalities in terms of extending the request and/or response and passing them on to the next function or middleware function in the chain.

Request
  → Middleware-1
  → next()
  → Middleware-2
  → Route Handler 1
  → Route handler 2
  → Send Response
  → End

By calling next() inside a middleware function; the processing is handed over to the next function or middleware function

Middleware functions can perform the following tasks:

Execute any code.
Make changes to the request and the response objects.
End the request-response cycle.
Call the next middleware function in the stack.

What does a middleware function look like? As following:

+ app.use(function (req, res, next) {
+  console.log('Time:', Date.now())
+  next()
+ })

The above middleware will log the time on each request received

Or you can run it on a very specific route (for example /users ) in the following way:

- app.use(function (req, res, next) {
+ app.use('/users', function (req, res, next) {
    console.log('Time:', Date.now());
    next();
  })

Or multiple middleware functions on the GET call of some route like /users/pankaj

- app.use('/users', function (req, res, next) {
+ app.get('/user/:username', function (req, res, next) {
    console.log('Time:', Date.now());
    next();
+ }, function (req, res, next) {
+   // send an entry to system log
+   next();
  })

Some common middlewares for an Express app are:

Body Parser - Parses the request body and transforms it into a JavaScript Object for easy operation
Logger - Logs the requests to console or any other specific log
CORS - Enables CORS for requests; it depends on how the middleware is used.

Now how do we use middleware to make a modular application?

We will be doing so by separating functionalities with respect to route and then attaching them as middleware function on some route base.

We will create an instance of router from express
Then we will add basic CRUD routes to the router instance
Then we will add this route instance to another route-base in the main Express app

Let's create one basic route based middleware for Tweets:

// file-name: app-middlewares/tweets.js
const express = require('express');
const router = express.Router();

router.get('/:id', (req, res) => {
  const { id } = req.params;
  res.send({ id });
});

router.get('/feed', (req, res) => {
  res.send('Here get the feed');
});

module.exports = router;

Here we created two routes:

/feed → for the tweets feed
/:id → for the tweet of matching id

As you notice, we did not put anything related to the base route except for how it should behave on the mount point.

For now, these routes are not accessible as we have not mounted them in our app.

Not let's mount the route middleware on to the route /tweets and see how it behaves in the app:

  const express = require('express')

+ const appRouter = require('./app-middlewares/tweets');
  ...
  const app = express();
  const port = 3000;

+ app.use('/tweets', appRouter);
  ...
  app.listen(port, () => {
    console.log(`Example app listening on port ${port}!`)
  });

After this when you restart your node server, you will see that /feed is available as a child of /tweets making the final route into /tweets/feed Similarly, for /:id, it will become /tweets/:id.

Till now we understood the following:

How to create basic Express server
How to use MySQL in Express
What is Middleware
How to arrange our application with middleware functions

Now let's create resolver functions to provide data to the feed and the tweet endpoint.

Here we are trying to keep the data-layer and controller separate. This way any future changes in controller or data-layer are very minimally affecting each other.

Feed

For the feed, we need to provide items in a paginated fashion. But before, we need to think about what kind of pagination we should go for. That means we will have two ways to choose from for the pagination: -Limit and Offset Based -Pivot Based

Limit and Offset based pagination

Limit and Offset based pagination is good for systems where the paginated data is not realtime or frequently changing. If we do so, we will run into problems of duplicated entries in the feed.

Pivot based pagination

In a Pivot based pagination system, the items before or after the pivot are requested. It is very similar to the Limit and Offset based pagination; except that the data is sorted with the pivoted information as well: generally by creation timestamp.

For a social media feed, the data is very dynamic or let's say real-time. So here we will go for the Pivot based pagination system.

Now here in our DB design, we can go for Row ID or Timestamp for our pivot, as both are sortable entities in our DB design; this might change for NoSQL based design or if we choose to use UUID or strings hash for our IDs.

We will go ahead with ID column as our pivot, and the following will be our SQL query to get a feed with 50 items:

// query-builders/feed-query.js
module.exports = (user, pivot) => `
  SELECT username, tweet, timestamp
  FROM tweets WHERE ( user_id = ${user}
   OR ( user_id IN (
    SELECT user2_id FROM following WHERE user1_id = ${user}
   ) )
  ) ${pivot ? `AND id < ${pivot}` : ''}
  ORDER BY id DESC
  LIMIT 0, 50`;

Here special to notice that, if this is the first load, we don't need pivot; so we will send the first 50 from the Tweets table sorted in descending order by ID.

Ad when we will pass the ID pivot, it will give us the 50 records from the specified ID, omitting that specific ID.

So using the above query; our /feed endpoint looks like the following:

...
const connection = require('../helpers/connection');
const query = require('../helpers/query');
const feedQuery = require('../query-builders/feed-query');
...
router.get('/feed', async (req, res) => {
  const user = 1;
  const pivot = null;
  const conn = await connection(dbConfig).catch(e => {});
  const feed = await query(conn, feedQuery(user, pivot))
  res.send(feed);
});
...

And our rote for specific tweet itself:

...
const connection = require('../helpers/connection');
const query = require('../helpers/query');
...
router.get('/:id', async (req, res) => {
  const { id } = req.params;
  const conn = await connection(dbConfig).catch(e => {});
  const tweet = await query(conn, `SELECT * FROM TWEETS
    WHERE id = ?`, [id])
  res.send(tweet);
});
...

With the above things in place we need a few more endpoints like the following:

GET /user => logged in user
GET /user/followers => followers of the user
GET /user/following => all the friends user is following
GET, PUT /user/settings => to update things like password,name etc
POST /user/follow -> to follow some friend

Authentication

POST /auth/register -> register as new user
POST /auth/login -> login for users
GET /auth/confirm -> confirm the email for user
GET, POST /auth/forgot -> forgot password

For authentication, we will use third party authentication scripts such as Firebase or Auth0

The following code will take care of auth and set the session or JWT for logged in user.

This logged in user will be the basic initial information for all the other routes like feed or user-related info

Let's implement the user-related routes considering that we have information about currently logged-in user.

User Profile

// GET
// /user
...
router.get('/', async (req, res) => {
  const user = 1;
  const conn = await connection(dbConfig).catch(e => {});
  const currentUser = await query(conn, `SELECT * FROM USERS
    WHERE id = ?`, [user])
  res.send(currentUser);
});
...

User's Followers

// GET
// /user/followers
...
router.get('/followers', async (req, res) => {
  const user = 1;
  const conn = await connection(dbConfig).catch(e => {});
  const followers = await query(conn, `SELECT
    USER_INFO.*, username as user1_username
    FROM (SELECT 
    user1_id, user2_id, username as user2_username
    FROM FOLLOWING LEFT JOIN USERS ON user2_id = users.id
    WHERE user1_id = ?) as USER_INFO
    LEFT JOIN USERS ON user1_id = users.id`, [user])
  res.send(followers);
});
...

User's friends whom User is Following

// GET
// /user/following
...
router.get('/following', async (req, res) => {
  const user = 1;
  const conn = await connection(dbConfig).catch(e => {});
  const followers = await query(conn, `SELECT
    USER_INFO.*, username as user1_username
    FROM (SELECT 
    user1_id, user2_id, username as user2_username
    FROM FOLLOWING LEFT JOIN USERS ON user2_id = users.id
    WHERE user2_id = ?) as USER_INFO
    LEFT JOIN USERS ON user1_id = users.id`, [user])
  res.send(followers);
});
...

Following a new Friend by User

// POST
// /user/follow
...
router.post('/following', async (req, res) => {
  const user = 1;
  const { id } = req.params;
  const conn = await connection(dbConfig).catch(e => {});
  const follow = await query(conn, `INSERT INTO FOLLOWING
    (user1_id, user2_id)
    VALUE (?, ?)`, [user, id])
  res.send(follow);
});

User's settings

// GET, PUT
// /user/settings 
...
router.get('/settings', async (req, res) => {
  const user = 1;
  const conn = await connection(dbConfig).catch(e => {});
  const settings = await query(conn, `SELECT * FROM SETTINGS WHERE user_id = ?`, [user])
  res.send(settings);
});
router.put('/settings', async (req, res) => {
  const user = 1;
  const vals = req.body;
  const values = Object.keys(vals).map(k => `${k}=${vals[k]}`);
  const conn = await connection(dbConfig).catch(e => {});
  const status = await query(conn, `UPDATE SETTINGS
        SET ? WHERE user_id = ?`, [values, user])
  res.send(status);
});
...

Attaching User Routes to App

As we created all above routes middleware for a user; let's mount this middleware on the /user route base:

  ...
- const appRouter = require('./app-middlewares/tweets');
+ const tweetsRouter = require('./app-middlewares/tweets');
+ const userRouter = require('./app-middlewares/user');
  ...
- app.use('/tweets', appRouter);
+ app.use('/tweets', tweetsRouter);
+ app.use('/user', userRouter);
  ...

And this how we have created:

REST(ish) API with Node.js and Express
Twitter-like application API with Node.js, Express, and MySQL

You can download following postman collection to browse through the API

View/Download the above code from this repo: Github: express-mysql

Conclusion

So in this article, we saw how to create APIs with Node.js, Express, and MySQL and how to develop the application in a maintainable and modular way.

Let me know what do you think about this article through comments 💬 or on Twitter at @patelpankaj and @time2hack

If you find this article helpful, please share it with others 🗣; subscribe to the blog for new posts and see you the next time.

Footnotes

This article was originally published on Time to Hack at Creating REST API in Node.js with Express and MySQL

Creating REST API in Node.js with Express and MySQL

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HTTP Server

Database Access & CRUD

Connect as a Promise

Query as a Promise

Middleware

Feed

User Profile

User's Followers

User's friends whom User is Following

Following a new Friend by User

User's settings

Attaching User Routes to App

Conclusion

Footnotes

Command Palette

Comments

More from this blog

HTTP Server

Database Access & CRUD

Connect as a Promise

Query as a Promise

Middleware

Feed

Limit and Offset based pagination

Pivot based pagination

User Profile

User's Followers

User's friends whom User is Following

Following a new Friend by User

User's settings

Attaching User Routes to App

Conclusion

Footnotes