Database API Project
📌 Covered in this chapter:
Models · Repository Layer · Service Layer · Controller Layer · Full CRUD Routes
Put it all together: build a full CRUD API backed by a real database, following the layered architecture from Phase 5's project structure.
1Database API Project — What You'll Learn
Put it all together: build a full CRUD API backed by a real database, following the layered architecture from Phase 5's project structure.
Here's everything this chapter covers, in the order you'll learn it:
- Defining a Course model
- Defining a User model
- Defining a Lesson model
- Relationships between models
- Setting up the database connection
- Building a CRUD repository layer
- Building a service layer for business logic
- Building a controller layer for request/response handling
- Wiring up API routes
- Adding validation
- Adding pagination and search
- Handling database errors gracefully
- Basic API testing
2Best Practices & Common Pitfalls
💡 Key things to remember:
- This project ties Phases 5 (structure), 7 (Express), 8 (validation/errors) and 9 (databases) together into one real, working backend — the shape most production Node.js APIs follow.
❓ Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
Q What's the most important thing to understand about database api project?
Focus on: Models · Repository Layer · Service Layer · Controller Layer · Full CRUD Routes. These are the core building blocks this chapter's examples are built around, and they show up repeatedly in later chapters of this course.
Q Do I need external npm packages for database api project?
Only where explicitly shown in the code examples above (like Express, Zod, or Socket.IO) — otherwise, this chapter relies entirely on Node.js's own built-in capabilities.