Building a Simple Task Management API with Node.js, Express and MongoDB

Introdoction

Task management is a crucial aspect of many applications and building a robust backend to handle tasks can streamline your development process. In this article, we'll create a simple Task Management API using Node.js, Express, and MongoDB. The code is organized into three main files: server.js, connectDB.js, and taskModel.js.

1. Setting up the Express Server

Let's start by setting up our Express server in server.js. This file acts as the entry point for our application.

// server.js

const dotenv = require("dotenv").config();
const express = require("express");
const connectDB = require("./config/connectDB");
const mongoose = require("mongoose");
const Task = require("./model/taskModel");

const app = express();

// Middleware
app.use(express.json());
app.use(express.urlencoded({ extended: false }));

// Routes
app.get("/", (req, res) => {
  res.send("Home page");
});

// Create a Task
app.post("/api/tasks", async (req, res) => {
  try {
    const task = await Task.create(req.body);
    res.json(task);
  } catch (error) {
    res.status(500).json({ msg: error.message });
  }
});

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

const startServer = async () => {
  try {
    await connectDB();
    app.listen(PORT, () => {
      console.log(`Server running on port ${PORT}`);
    });
  } catch (error) {
    console.log(error);
  }
};

startServer();

In this code snippet, we've set up an Express server, defined a simple route for the home page, and created an API endpoint for adding tasks.

2. Connecting to MongoDB

The connectDB.js file is responsible for establishing a connection to our MongoDB database using Mongoose.

// connectDB.js

const mongoose = require("mongoose");

const connectDB = async () => {
  try {
    const connect = await mongoose.connect(process.env.MONGO_URI);
    console.log(`MongoDB Connected`);
  } catch (error) {
    console.log(error);
    process.exit(1);
  }
};

module.exports = connectDB;

This module exports a function that connects to MongoDB using the URI specified in the MONGO_URI environment variable.

3. Creating the Task Model

In taskModel.js, we define the Mongoose schema for our tasks and create a model based on that schema.

// taskModel.js

const mongoose = require("mongoose");

const taskSchema = mongoose.Schema(
  {
    name: {
      type: String,
      required: [true, "Please add a task"],
    },
    completed: {
      type: Boolean,
      required: true,
      default: false,
    },
  },
  {
    timestamps: true,
  }
);

const Task = mongoose.model("Task", taskSchema);

module.exports = Task;

This module exports the Task model, which represents the structure of our task documents in the MongoDB collection.

Adding more features
updating and
deleting tasks,
implementing,
user authentication...