Using Node.js with MySQL

So you have been playing around with Node.js writing pretty little programs and marvelling at how awesome it is. You have finally wrapped your brain around this async stuff and feel confident that you can go to callback hell and still find your way back. But then you realise, your newly acquired wizardry isn't that much fun if you cannot collect data, store it in a database, and do something useful with it. So you jump on your broom and start surfing the interwebs in search of a solution.

When you search the internet for a Node.js database solution you will quickly notice how popular NoSQL databases are. As someone who is new to Node.js it is easy to start believing that it only speaks to NoSQL databases or that it doesn't work well with SQL databases. I held this perception for quite a long time. Sometimes a SQL database may be a better solution for you, it is a good fit if you are dealing with a lot of relational data that requires complex queries. Node.js prides itself at being very efficient in performing IO intensive tasks - that includes communicating with both SQL and NoSQL databases. Ghost, one of the most prominent opensource Node projects, uses SQL databases. Today I will share with you how I use MySQL in my Node.js projects.

Choosing an ORM

The standard way of connecting to a database in most platforms is through an ORM, it provides a nice API to interact with your programs. After doing some research I came across Bookshelf.js, it is described as a JavaScript ORM for Node.js, built on the Knex SQL query builder and designed to work well with PostgreSQL, MySQL, and SQLite3.

My decision to pick Bookshelf.js was influenced by the following reasons:

It has good documentation

It extends the Model and Collection patterns of Backbone.js - which I was already familiar with.

It is used by the Ghost project - while reading the project's code base I found it quite intuitive.

It uses promises which makes handling callbacks less painful

It has a large community following and is actively maintained

Getting started

To get up and running you need to install Bookshelf.js and its dependencies.

npm install bookshelf mysql knex --save

Making a database connection is pretty straight forward, let's do it in app.js :

app.js

var knex = require('knex')({ client: 'mysql', connection: { host : '127.0.0.1', user : 'your_database_user', password : 'your_database_password', database : 'myapp_test', charset : 'utf8' } }); var Bookshelf = require('bookshelf')(knex);

We need to be able to reuse the same connection throughout our application, make sure it is accessible globally.

Using Bookshelf

The example that I am going to use to demonstrate how Bookshelf works is that of a blog post. We will create a blog post that includes author, category, and tags metadata.

Firstly, we need to create database tables, let's create a separate file and name it schema.js . This file contains the schema for our database tables.

schema.js

var Schema = { users: { id: {type: 'increments', nullable: false, primary: true}, email: {type: 'string', maxlength: 254, nullable: false, unique: true}, name: {type: 'string', maxlength: 150, nullable: false} }, categories: { id: {type: 'increments', nullable: false, primary: true}, name: {type: 'string', maxlength: 150, nullable: false} }, posts: { id: {type: 'increments', nullable: false, primary: true}, user_id: {type: 'integer', nullable: false, unsigned: true}, category_id: {type: 'integer', nullable: false, unsigned: true}, title: {type: 'string', maxlength: 150, nullable: false}, slug: {type: 'string', maxlength: 150, nullable: false, unique: true}, html: {type: 'text', maxlength: 16777215, fieldtype: 'medium', nullable: false}, created_at: {type: 'dateTime', nullable: false}, updated_at: {type: 'dateTime', nullable: true} }, tags: { id: {type: 'increments', nullable: false, primary: true}, slug: {type: 'string', maxlength: 150, nullable: false, unique: true}, name: {type: 'string', maxlength: 150, nullable: false} }, posts_tags: { id: {type: 'increments', nullable: false, primary: true}, post_id: {type: 'integer', nullable: false, unsigned: true}, tag_id: {type: 'integer', nullable: false, unsigned: true} } }; module.exports = Schema;

Pro Tip: Promises will save you a lot of time and headaches when dealing with databases in Node, my preferred flavour is when. Also install a utility library for doing common tasks, lodash is one of the best.

npm install when lodash --save

We need another file for the code that creates our tables, let's call it migrate.js . It requires knex so let's copy the code that we wrote earlier and place it at the beginning of the file.

migrate.js

I also copied the createTable function from the Ghost project, it accepts a tableName string and returns a promise.

var knex = require('knex')({ client: 'mysql', connection: { host : 'localhost', user : 'your_database_user', password : 'your_database_password', database : 'myapp_test', charset : 'utf8' } }); var Schema = require('./schema'); var sequence = require('when/sequence'); var _ = require('lodash'); function createTable(tableName) { return knex.schema.createTable(tableName, function (table) { var column; var columnKeys = _.keys(Schema[tableName]); _.each(columnKeys, function (key) { if (Schema[tableName][key].type === 'text' && Schema[tableName][key].hasOwnProperty('fieldtype')) { column = table[Schema[tableName][key].type](key, Schema[tableName][key].fieldtype); } else if (Schema[tableName][key].type === 'string' && Schema[tableName][key].hasOwnProperty('maxlength')) { column = table[Schema[tableName][key].type](key, Schema[tableName][key].maxlength); } else { column = table[Schema[tableName][key].type](key); } if (Schema[tableName][key].hasOwnProperty('nullable') && Schema[tableName][key].nullable === true) { column.nullable(); } else { column.notNullable(); } if (Schema[tableName][key].hasOwnProperty('primary') && Schema[tableName][key].primary === true) { column.primary(); } if (Schema[tableName][key].hasOwnProperty('unique') && Schema[tableName][key].unique) { column.unique(); } if (Schema[tableName][key].hasOwnProperty('unsigned') && Schema[tableName][key].unsigned) { column.unsigned(); } if (Schema[tableName][key].hasOwnProperty('references')) { column.references(Schema[tableName][key].references); } if (Schema[tableName][key].hasOwnProperty('defaultTo')) { column.defaultTo(Schema[tableName][key].defaultTo); } }); }); } function createTables () { var tables = []; var tableNames = _.keys(Schema); tables = _.map(tableNames, function (tableName) { return function () { return createTable(tableName); }; }); return sequence(tables); } createTables() .then(function() { console.log('Tables created!!'); process.exit(0); }) .catch(function (error) { throw error; });

Run the file from the command-line node migrate . If everything went well you will see the text Tables created!! .

Another Pro Tip: Ghost is an amazing piece of software, its code is clean and well written. When you get stuck with Bookshelf and cannot find an answer on Google, just dig through the code base and look at how Bookshelf is used. I find myself constantly referring to it for solutions.

Now back to app.js - I only use Bookshelf in data structures, i.e, in my Models and Collections. Let's go ahead and create a few Models:

// User model var User = Bookshelf.Model.extend({ tableName: 'users' }); // Post model var Post = Bookshelf.Model.extend({ tableName: 'posts', hasTimestamps: true, category: function () { return this.belongsTo(Category, 'category_id'); }, tags: function () { return this.belongsToMany(Tag); }, author: function () { return this.belongsTo(User); } }); // Category model var Category = Bookshelf.Model.extend({ tableName: 'categories', posts: function () { return this.hasMany(Post, 'category_id'); } }); // Tag model var Tag = Bookshelf.Model.extend({ tableName: 'tags', posts: function () { return this.belongsToMany(Post); } });

Bookshelf is heavily influenced by Eloquent ORM and handles one-to-one, one-to-many, and many-to-many associations by defining relationships on Models. What is important to know is how Bookshelf handles these relationships under the hood. Let us look at some of the special properties and methods.

hasTimestamps

Defining a hasTimestamps property in a model and assigning a value of true has special effects. Upon creation or when updating, Bookshelf will automatically insert values for the created_at and updated_at columns.

hasMany

The hasMany method tells the current model that it has a one-to-many relationship with the model contained in its arguments.

belongsTo

The belongsTo method tells the current model that it has a one-to-one or one-to-many relationship with the model contained in its arguments.

belongsToMany

The belongsToMany method tells the current model that it has a many-to-many relationship with the model contained in its arguments. This type of a relationship is joined through another table. In our example, the Post model has a many-to-many relationship with the Tags model. Bookshelf will assume that there is a table named posts_tags - it joins the two table names with an underscore. This is all done under the hood, all you have to do is create the table and Bookshelf will do the rest.

In other relationships Bookshelf assumes that table names are plurals and that the foreignkey is the singular post-fixed with _id . It uses the following format: <TableNameSingular>_id . In our example, the author method in the Post model will be mapped to the User model (where the table name is users ) through the foreignkey user_id (substring user is the singular of table name users ).

If your foreignkey and table name do not conform to the above convention you need to specify the foreignkey as a second argument like we did for the relationship between Posts and Categories .

Phew, hope that makes sense, if not leave a comment.

In the next post we will create a small API that uses our Models. Stay tuned.

Update

Checkout the post that uses the Models to create a small API