Contact Manager Rest API (Node.js + Express + MongoDB)

Getting started

To get the Node server running locally:

• Clone this repo
• npm install to install all required dependencies
• Install MongoDB Community Edition (instructions) and run it by executing mongod
• npm start to start the local server

Code Overview

Dependencies

• expressjs - The server for handling and routing HTTP requests
• express-jwt - Middleware for validating JWTs for authentication
• jsonwebtoken - For generating JWTs used by authentication
• mongoose - For modeling and mapping MongoDB data to javascript
• mongoose-unique-validator - For handling unique validation errors in Mongoose. Mongoose only handles validation at the document level, so a unique index across a collection will throw an exception at the driver level. The mongoose-unique-validator plugin helps us by formatting the error like a normal mongoose ValidationError.

Application Structure

• app.js - The entry point to our application. This file defines our express server and connects it to MongoDB using mongoose. It also requires the routes and models we'll be using in the application.
• config/ - This folder contains a central location for configuration/environment variables.
• routes/ - This folder contains the route definitions for our API.
• models/ - This folder contains the schema definitions for our Mongoose models.
• middlewares/ - This folder contains middlewares for our API.
• controllers/ - This folder contains CRUD logic for interacting with MongoDB.