my-books-server

Example Node.js and Express server for the my-books Aurelia sample SPA project (companion to the book Aurelia in Action).

Technologies Used

• MongoDB
• NodeJS
• ExpressJS
• JWT (for token based authentication). This is set up in a naive way for demo purposes only with user passwords stored in plain text in MongoDB, so shouldn't be taken directly as an example of how to do this in production.

How to Use

Set up the prerequisites

• Download and install Node.js
• Download and install MongoDB
• Install NPM packages npm install

Configuration

Configuration for variables such as the database and whether authentication is enabled is stored in the /config.js file.

module.exports = {

    'secret': 'my-books-auth-key', //token based auth key.
    'database': 'mongodb://localhost/my-books', //MongoDB database
    'authEnabled': false //toggle to enable or disable auth
};

Initialize the database

You can initialize the my-books MongoDB database by running the NPM command: npm run database. This creates the new my-books database if it does not exist and starts MongoDB on the default port. The database is now ready to receive data.

Initialize the server

You can initialize the simple Express.js based server by running the npm run dev which sets up the routes and initializes the application. The first time that the application runs the database will be populated with default books, genres, and shelves.

Re-seeding the database

This sample REST API is a work in progress. As such, we'll be making adjustments to the schema and content of the MongoDB instance. You can re-build the data-set based by performing the following steps:

• Pull the latest version of the repo to access the most recent seed files.
• Run the npm command npm run reset-database to clear the existing collections
• Re run the API with npm run dev which will re-initialize the data-set from the latest seed files.

Using the REST API

You can see which REST commands are available by loading the my-books postman script: