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The API package

This package sets up a Express API server and a connection to a SQL database using Knex.

For development you can run the command npm run dev which uses nodemon to watch files and restarts the server when a change happens.
You can visit http://localhost:3001/api which will test the connection to the database.

There is no build step so when deploying it is enough to run npm run start.

Environment variables

You can set environment variables in the .env file or in the Render.com environment variables section.
When you start a fresh project, make sure to copy the .env file by using cp .env-example .env.

Database clients

The package comes installed with both a MySQL client for local development and a PostgreSQL client to use on Render.com.
You can change which client to use by changing the DB_CLIENT environment variable (either mysql2 or pg).

Database managed with code

You can get far with a simple .sql file to manage your database but if you'd prefer to manage your database with Knex, you can use Knex Migrations to set up your schema (as well as rollback schema changes across versions).
You can also use Knex Seeds to populate your database with data.
Combined, these two techniques make it very easy to experiment with changes to your database or recover your database if something happens to it.
It also makes it possible to share temporary schema changes with others during Pull Request testing.

Deploying

Last tested: 2024-04-11

Deploying a PostgreSQL database

From your Render.com Dashboard page, click the tile called PostGreSQL.

In the next screen, fill in the marked fields, then scroll down.

Select the "Free" tier. Then click "Create".

Your database will be automatically deleted after 90 days, if you need it for longer simply recreate it following the same steps.

On the next page, scroll down to the section "Connections".

We need to copy the the following fields:

  • Port
  • Database
  • Username
  • Password
  • External Database URL

We can put these into our .env file to test our database locally.

It's important to note that we need to extract only the host name from "External Database URL".
If the value you copied was:

postgres://my_user:EiwuEVDpdGzoDRXTquSSXNMHoVmCh1qG@dpg-cobfi7i1hbls73e0dkt0-a.frankfurt-postgres.render.com/my_database_u9be

Then what you want to extract is:

dpg-cobfi7i1hbls73e0dkt0-a.frankfurt-postgres.render.com

Your .env file should look something like this in the end:

PORT=3001

DB_CLIENT=pg
DB_HOST=dpg-cobfi7i1hbls73e0dkt0-a.frankfurt-postgres.render.com
DB_PORT=5432
DB_USER=my_user
DB_PASSWORD=EiwuEVDpdGzoDRXTquSSXNMHoVmCh1qG
DB_DATABASE_NAME=my_database_u9be

You can run npm run dev and visit http://localhost:3001/api to verify that your local API server is able to connect to your database on Render.com.

You can use the same variables to connect to the database using a PostgreSQL management tool (such as pgAdmin) to test and setup your database.

Deploying an API server

If you go back to your Dashboard you should now see your database in your list of deployed services. From here click "New" and then select "Web Service".

We want to deploy from a Git repository, this is called GitOps. Each time we push a new commit to the Git repository, Render will update your deployed service.

If you cannot find your Git repository, you may need to re-configure your Github account to allow Render to see the repository you want to deploy from.

Click "Connect" for the repository you want to use (the one that is based on this template).

In the next page, fill in all the required fields.

When you reach the section about "Environment variables", click the button called "Add from .env" which opens a dialog. You can copy the content of your .env file into this dialog (except for the PORT variable), then click "Add variables".

The page should look something like this after.
It's important here to change the value of the variable DB_USE_SSL from "false" to "true".
Finish up by clicking "Create Web Service".

In the next screen you'll see the output of your build step which is downloading your code and deploying it.

Once you see the text "Your service is live" you can test your API with Postman by using the deployed URL, which should be something like https://hyf-template-api.onrender.com/api. You should see the output from the database.

Next, let's deploy the web app by following the steps here.