insta-mongo-example

Just a simple example of a Node.js/Express app using insta-mongo for an instant MongoDB dev database.

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Setup

Download the code repo or clone it using Git.

Open a terminal, then change directory into the repo.

Now install dependencies:

npm install

Run in dev mode

Run it like this:

npm run start:dev

This starts the Node.js app with live reload using Nodemon, sets NODE_ENV to "development" and starts the MongoDB dev database.

The REST API is available at http://localhost:5050.

As an example you can get a list of people by opening http://localhost:5050/api/people in your browser.

Also take a look in test.http. This is a script for VS Code REST Client that is setup to exercise the various routes of the REST API.

How it works

When you invoke npm run start:dev it runs the following script (defined in package.json):

concurrently "npm run start-db" "npm run start-with-dev-db" --kill-others

This invokes the two quoted commands in parallel. The flag --kill-others makes the concurrently command automatically kill the dev database server when the Node.js app terminates.

The script start-db (also from package.json) uses insta-mongo to create an instant dev database:

insta-mongo --db=backend --load=three --db-port=7001 --rest-port=7000

The script start-with-dev-db (again from package.json) starts the Node.js app configured to connect to the dev database:

cross-env NODE_ENV=development DB_CONNECTION_STRING=mongodb://localhost:7001 nodemon index.js

Hopefully that's clear, but if not please log an issue and ask a question or reach out to me on ashley@codecapers.com.au.

Run the code for production

Run the app for production in the standard way:

npm start

There's no dev database in production mode, you have to supply your own MongoDB database and set environment variable DB_CONNECTION_STRING to the connection string your database.

To run this in production you should also set the environment varible NODE_ENV to "production".