RESTful Blogging API with Node and Express.js

Blogs Websites have become very popular nowadays for sharing your thoughts among the users over internet. In this article, you will be guided through creating a Restful API for the Blogging website with the help of Node, Express, and MongoDB.

Prerequisites:

• Node JS & NPM
• Express JS
• MongoDB

Approach to Creating Restful Blogging App:

• To create a Restful Blog API, first, we will have to define how much field is required for the blog and then create the blog schema according to that.
• Create a collection in the MongoDB to store the blogs.
• Connect the application with MongoDB and create routes of creating, editing, deleting, and viewing the blogs, and to save it in the database.
• The application must do CRUD operation so that the content of the blogs can easily be manipulated and managed.

Steps to Create the Project:

Step 1: First check if the node and npm is installed in your system.

node -v 
npm -v

Step 2: Create the folder for your application.

mkdir BLOG-API
cd BLOG-API

Step 3: To initialize the node project run the following command.

npm init -y

It will initialize your project and create a package.json file containing your project details.

Step 4: Install the required dependencies for the project.

npm i express mongoose nodemon

Dependencies: You can verify the all required dependencies are installed in package.json

"dependencies": {
    "express": "^4.18.2",
    "mongoose": "^8.2.0",
    "nodemon": "^3.1.0"
}

Folder Structure:

Step 5: Create a server.js file and start the server with the following command.

nodemon server.js

Step 6: Create a Database:

So we will use MongoDB Compass to create our blog_api database on our laptop/pc.

• Installed and opened the MongoDB Compass
• Click on the connect button to connect [localhost](http://localhost) Database
• Now it is time to create a blog_api database

create-db

• Click on connect to create database

db_create

Database is created successfully.

database

Step 7: Connecting MongoDB to the Application

• For this, we will create a new file ‘config.js’  in the same folder and write the implementation code there after that, we will connect this file to our server.js file.

Javascript

//config.js

const mongoose = require("mongoose");

const connectDB = async () => {
  try {
    await mongoose.connect("mongodb://localhost:27017/blog_api");
    console.log("MongoDB connected");
  } catch (error) {
    console.error(error.message);
    process.exit(1);
  }
};

module.exports = connectDB;

• Connect the application to MongoDB using Mongoose by adding the below code to the server.js file

Javascript

const connectDB = require("./config");
connectDB();

• Now run the server.js file to check Database is Connected or not ?

connect_db

Step 8: Define the Blog schema using Mongoose.

• blog schema includes title, content & author field

Javascript

const mongoose = require("mongoose");

const blogSchema = new mongoose.Schema({
    title: String,
    content: String,
    author: String,
    created_at: { type: Date, default: Date.now },
});

const Blog = mongoose.model("Blog", blogSchema);

module.exports = Blog;

Step 9: Implement CRUD operations:

1. Create a Blog:

Javascript

app.post("/api/blogs", async (req, res) => {
    try {
        const blog = await Blog.create(req.body);
        res.json(blog);
    } catch (err) {
        res.status(500).json({ message: err.message });
    }
});

• This route handler for creating a new blog post.

create_post

2. Get All Blog:

Javascript

app.get("/api/blogs", async (req, res) => {
    try {
        const blogs = await Blog.find();
        res.json(blogs);
    } catch (err) {
        res.status(500).json({ message: err.message });
    }
});

• This route handler for fetching all blog posts.

get_all

3. Get Blog by Id:

Javascript

app.get("/api/blogs/:id", async (req, res) => {
    try {
        const blog = await Blog.findById(req.params.id);
        res.json(blog);
    } catch (err) {
        res.status(500).json({ message: err.message });
    }
});

• This route handler for fetching a single blog post by its id from the database.

get_by_id

4. Edit Blog:

Javascript

app.put("/api/blogs/:id", async (req, res) => {
    try {
        const blog = await Blog.findByIdAndUpdate(req.params.id, req.body, {
            new: true,
        });
        res.json(blog);
    } catch (err) {
        res.status(500).json({ message: err.message });
    }
});

• This route handler allows updating a blog post by its id.

edit

5. Delete All Blog:

Javascript

app.delete("/api/blogs", async (req, res) => {
    try {
        await Blog.deleteMany();
        res.json({ message: "All blogs deleted successfully" });
    } catch (err) {
        res.status(500).json({ message: err.message });
    }
});

• This route handler deletes all blog posts.

delete-all

6. Delete Blog by Id:

Javascript

app.delete("/api/blogs/:id", async (req, res) => {
    try {
        const blog = await Blog.findByIdAndDelete(req.params.id);
        res.json({ message: "Blog deleted successfully", deletedBlog: blog });
    } catch (err) {
        res.status(500).json({ message: err.message });
    }
});

• This is a route handler for deleting a blog post by id using Mongoose in a Node.js/Express application.

deletebyid

Final Code:

Javascript

//server.js

const express = require('express');
const app = express();
const connectDB = require("./config");
const Blog = require('./blogSchema')

app.use(express.json());
connectDB();

app.post("/api/blogs", async (req, res) => {
    try {
        const blog = await Blog.create(req.body);
        res.json(blog);
    } catch (err) {
        res.status(500).json({ message: err.message });
    }
});

app.get("/api/blogs", async (req, res) => {
    try {
        const blogs = await Blog.find();
        res.json(blogs);
    } catch (err) {
        res.status(500).json({ message: err.message });
    }
});

app.get("/api/blogs/:id", async (req, res) => {
    try {
        const blog = await Blog.findById(req.params.id);
        res.json(blog);
    } catch (err) {
        res.status(500).json({ message: err.message });
    }
});

app.put("/api/blogs/:id", async (req, res) => {
    try {
        const blog = await Blog.findByIdAndUpdate(req.params.id, req.body, {
            new: true,
        });
        res.json(blog);
    } catch (err) {
        res.status(500).json({ message: err.message });
    }
});

app.delete("/api/blogs", async (req, res) => {
    try {
        await Blog.deleteMany();
        res.json({ message: "All blogs deleted successfully" });
    } catch (err) {
        res.status(500).json({ message: err.message });
    }
});

app.delete("/api/blogs/:id", async (req, res) => {
    try {
        const blog = await Blog.findByIdAndDelete(req.params.id);
        res.json({ message: "Blog deleted successfully", deletedBlog: blog });
    } catch (err) {
        res.status(500).json({ message: err.message });
    }
});

const PORT = process.env.PORT || 5000;

app.listen(PORT, () => console.log(`Server running on port ${PORT}`));

Javascript

//blogSchema.js

const mongoose = require("mongoose");

const blogSchema = new mongoose.Schema({
    title: String,
    content: String,
    author: String,
    created_at: { type: Date, default: Date.now },
});

const Blog = mongoose.model("Blog", blogSchema);

module.exports = Blog;

Javascript

//config.js

const mongoose = require("mongoose");

const connectDB = async () => {
    try {
        await mongoose.connect("mongodb://localhost:27017/blog_api");
        console.log("MongoDB connected");
    } catch (error) {
        console.error(error.message);
        process.exit(1);
    }
};

module.exports = connectDB;

Output: