deepcloud / ecomapi

See Post at: http://pixelhandler.com/blog/2012/02/09/develop-a-restful-api-using-node-js-with-express-and-mongoose/

Build a RESTful api using node - ecommerce example

API for ecommerce application

Design

• Simple API design and pragmatic REST - only 2 base URLs per resource
• Keep verbs out of your base URLs
• Our HTTP verbs are POST, GET, PUT, and DELETE (CRUD - Create, Read, Update, Delete)
• Concrete names are better than abstract

Example : two resources (/products and /products/1) and the four HTTP verbs

Resource	Post (create)	Get (read)	Put (update)	Delete (delete)
/products	create a new product	list products	bulk update products	delete all products
/products/1234	error	show 1234	if exists update 1234, else error	delete 1234

Nouns

Products

Product:

Id,  
Title,  
Description,  
Image URL,  
Categories: [ { Name } ],  
Style Number,  
Colors: [  
  {  
    Name,  
    Images: [  
      { Size, URL }  
    ],  
    Sizes: [  
      { Size, Available, SKU, Price }  
    ],  
  }  
]

Urls:

• /products - list
• /products/:id - single

Data: MongoDB using Mongoose with Express framework running with Node.js

Models are defined by passing a Schema instance to mongoose.model.

References

• API design nouns are good, verbs are bad
• Models are defined by passing a Schema instance to mongoose.model
• SchemaTypes take care of validation, casting, defaults, and other general options in our models
• Embedded documents are documents with schemas of their own that are part of other documents
• Backbone Todo boilerplates demonstrating integration with Node.js, Express, MongoDB