Loopback Examples: Office Supplies

How to install and run the Office Supplies example app:

Clone the project and install the server dependencies

git clone git@github.com:strongloop/loopback-example-office-supplies.git
cd loopback-example-office-supplies
npm install

Run the app

Make sure you are in the server directory!

node app

How to build the Office Supplies example app:

0. Make sure you have slc version >= 2.1.0.

To install the latest version of slc:

npm install strong-cli -g

To check your version of slc:

slc version

Should print something similar to:

slc v2.1.1 (node v0.10.24)

1. Create the application using the slc command line tool.

mkdir loopback-example-office-supplies
cd loopback-example-office-supplies
slc lb project server

2. Define a product model to persist a list of products.

cd server
slc lb model product

3. Define a Category model.

slc lb model category

4. Setup a relationship between Categories and Products.

Edit the models.json file, and replace the following lines:

 "product": { 
    "properties": {},
    "public": true,
    "dataSource": "db"
  },
  ...

with the following:

  "product": { 
    "options": {
      "relations": {
        "category": {
          "model": "category",
          "type": "belongsTo",
          "foreignKey": "categoryId"
        },
        "owner": {
          "model": "category",
          "type": "belongsTo",
          "foreignKey": "ownerId"
        }
      }
    },
    "properties": {},
    "public": true,
    "dataSource": "db"
  },

5. Create a product (Node.js)

Add the following code in /models/products.js:

var app = require('../app');
var product = app.models.product;
var category = app.models.category;

category.create({name: 'stationery'}, function(err, stationery) {
  product.create({
    name: 'pencil',
    price: 0.99,
    categoryId: stationery.id,
    ownerId: stationery.id
  }, function() {
    product.findOne({where: {categoryId: stationery.id}}, function(err, pencil) {
      console.log(pencil);
    });
  });
});

6. Run the app

Now run the app as follows. Make sure you are in the server directory:

$ slc run

7. Check out your APIs with the built-in API Explorer

View your application's APIs with the LoopBack API Explorer at http://0.0.0.0:3000/explorer.
In addition to the standard endpoints for users, accessTokens, applications, push, installations, and notifications, you will see endpoints for the products and categories models you created.

Click on /products to see the REST endpoints for the products model.

You can see the "product" data you added programmatically, click:

1. /products
2. GET / Find all instances of the model matched by filter from the data source.
3. Try it out!

In the Response Body you'll see the operation returns the data you added:

[
  {
    "id": 1,
    "categoryId": 1,
    "ownerId": 1,
    "name": "pencil",
    "price": 0.99
  }
]

If you want to convince yourself that the write APIs also work, try this:

1. Click PUT /products Update an existing model instance or insert a new one into the data source.
2. Copy the data returned from the above GET operation (as shown above), and paste it in the Value field under Parameters, but edit it so it has a unique id value and a different product name, as shown for example below.
3. Click Try it Out! to perform the PUT operation.
4. Repeat the GET operation you performed previously to confirm that the data was saved and is returned by the query.

[
  {
    "id": 2,
    "categoryId": 1,
    "ownerId": 1,
    "name": "pen",
    "price": 0.99
  }
]

8. Secure all the APIs.

This will prevent any unauthorized access to the REST API.

slc lb acl --all-models --deny --everyone

9. Allow admins to modify products

slc lb acl --model product --allow --owner --all