Learn Gulp, Loopback and Sequelize

In this course the developer will learn how to create a LoopBack API and build it out to an API that can be used as a backend for apps. We will start by creating a basic LoopBack API project and gradually enhance it to a production ready API. The API we create defines a few models to persist the data and has custom functionality, validation and hooks added to those models. 

After our data structure is defined we will learn how to extend the functionality of LoopBack by using mixins and components. We will also lock our API down using ACL’s and create a mechanism to automatically define the admin and user roles and create our admin user.   

The last part of the course will show how how to filter the data stored in the API. We will make the API production-ready by adding unit tests, connecting it to MongoDB and we will show how to deploy the app to now.sh.   

LoopBack is a highly-extensible, open-source Node.js framework.

loopback

Build a Node.js REST API with LoopBack

In this series we will take a look at Gulp. Gulp is a task runner. It is the commander of our army of helper robots that take critical, yet totally mundane, tasks and perform them hundreds of times per day so we don't have to. When we sit down to work, we want to enter a single command, and then spend the rest of our day writing code, testing, and basically not thinking about how it is all glued together in the background.

Automation is critical to any project of significant size. We will start with the Eggly Bookmarks application, and develop proper build automation that will include **production ready** tools that you can start using in your applications today!

AngularJS is an open-source JavaScript framework, maintained by Google, that assists with running single-page applications. Its goal is to augment web-based applications with model–view–controller (MVC) capability, in an effort to make both development and testing easier.

angularjs

Angular Automation with Gulp

In this lesson, we are going to learn how to create a config file to store common values so that we can reuse them multiple times in our `gulpfile.js`. As our `gulpfile.js` grows in complexity, we may find that we are introducing complex and multiple file path references. By creating a `gulp.config.js` file, we can simplify these references and make it easier to refactor and extend in the future. 

Angular Automation: Gulp Config

In this lesson, we are going to learn how to use `gulp.watch` to detect local file changes and execute additional Gulp tasks. To illustrate this concept, we are also going to hook up `gulp-jshint` to automation lint our JavaScript as we make changes to our code.

Angular Automation: Gulp Watch

Angular projects require automation. Period. 

In this series we will take a look at Gulp. Gulp is a task runner. It is the commander of our army of helper robots that take critical, yet totally mundane, tasks and perform them hundreds of times per day so we don't have to. When we sit down to work, we want to enter a single command, and then spend the rest of our day writing code, testing, and basically not thinking about how it is all glued together in the background.

Automation is critical to any project of significant size. We will start with the Eggly Bookmarks application, and develop proper build automation that will include **production ready** tools that you can start using in your applications today!

Angular Automation: Introduction to Gulp

In this lesson, we are going to learn how to copy assets from one place to another using Gulp. This is important as you start to prepare your source files to be deployed into production. We will learn how to implement `gulp.src`, `gulp.pipe` and `gulp.dest` as well as the **del** plugin as we copy our files from the source directory into a build directory.

Angular Automation: Copy Assets with Gulp

In this lesson, we are going to learn how to use the `gulp-inject` plugin to sanely and efficiently manage our file references with our HTML. Manually declaring JavaScript references will quickly get out of hand as your application grows in size and complexity. The `gulp-inject` plugin solves this problem by taking a stream of files, converting them into string references and then injecting those references into your HTML via annotations. 

Angular Automation: Gulp Inject

In this lesson, we are going to learn how to automatically serve our project via an HTTP server using `gulp-serve`. Being able to serve our project from an HTTP server allows us to bypass a myriad of development issues such as loading remote source files.

Angular Automation: Gulp Serve

In this lesson, we will learn how tasks work in Gulp. We will talk about how to define a task and what each parameter in the definition does. We will see how task dependencies work and talk about how to handle asynchronous issues using `run-sequence`.

Angular Automation: Gulp Tasks

A relation in LoopBack is a way to associate the data from multiple models with each other. LoopBack supports various types of relations each with a different use case.

In this lesson we will create a second model called Category and create a relation between the Category and the Product models. To do this we will first add a property to the Product model called `categoryId`. This will allow us to store for each Product the category it belongs to. We then move on to create the actual relationships. 

Our first relationship defines that a `Category hasMany Products` and the second one that a `Product belongsTo a Category`.

After defining these relations we will use the API Explorer to see how we can interact with this related data.

Create a relation between two LoopBack models

In this lesson we will look at the filters that can be used to retrieve and manipulate the data stored in LoopBack. 

We will use [Postman](https://www.getpostman.com/) to interact with the `/Categories` and `/Products` endpoints. 

Using the URL parameters we will apply at the various filters LoopBack has to offer: `include`, `order`, `where`, `fields`, `limit` and `offset`. 

Filter model data in LoopBack

In this lesson we look at extending the functionality of LoopBack models by defining a remote method. 

A remote method is a method on a model exposed over a custom REST endpoint. 

Using the `lb remote-method` command we will create the remote method meta-data in `product.json`. We will verify that this got created and that we see the new REST endpoint got added. Then we will create the actual method in `product.js` and enhance it so that the API will return an error if we want to buy a negative amount of products.

Define a remote method on a LoopBack model

In this lesson we will create a dynamic datasource in LoopBack. If the API is started with the environment variable `MONGODB_URL` it will use this url and the `loopback-connector-mongodb` package to store the data in MongoDB.

In the course we will use a local MongoDB instance. If you don't have MongoDB running locally you can always create a [free MongoDB Atlas database](https://egghead.io/lessons/create-a-free-database-on-mongodb-atlas).


Create a MongoDB DataSource in LoopBack

In this lesson you will learn how to persist the data from the memory connector. As the name suggests, the memory connector stores the data in memory. This means that if you restart the server, the data is gone. In development mode it can be useful to store this data in a file, so it gets persisted between server restarts, and it can be easily inspected.

Persist in-memory data to a file when developing Node.js LoopBack API's

In this lesson, we learn how to get up and running with Gulp by initializing our project with ```npm init``` and then installing the Gulp CLI globally and then installing it locally to our project. We finish the lesson off by creating our first Gulp file and running our first Gulp task.

Angular Automation: Installing Gulp Globally and Locally

In this lesson we will learn to create a development mode for our server. We do this by installing nodemon as a dev dependency and creating a script tag called 'dev'. 

This script tag will execute the command `nodemon server/server.js --watch common --watch server`.  

We can execute this command by running `npm run dev`. 

When running in development mode the server will be automatically restarted when there are changes detected in the `common` and `server` directories.

Setup a development mode in LoopBack API using nodemon

In this lesson we will learn how to protect our API using ACL’s. 

ACL stands for Access Control List and it's function is to control permissions of resources in the API. It does this by keeping a mapping between an API resource and a principal. An API resource as an API endpoint like a remote method or a whole model. A principal in LoopBack are users or applications that can be grouped in a role.

In order to get the API production ready we will protect a selection of our REST endpoints with ACL’s. We will look at how we can obtain an access token and how we can use that in our requests.

Finally we will write some unit tests to make sure that the ACL does what we expect. We enhance our test setup by exporting `request` with is provided by the [supertest](https://www.npmjs.com/package/supertest) library.

In our tests we use `request` to verify that our endpoints return the correct HTTP status code.  

Configure ACL’s to protect the LoopBack API

In this lesson we will look at how to deploy our LoopBack API project using [now](https://zeit.co/now). 

We will install the now client, create an account and deploy our app.

Using `now secrets` features we will store our database connection url which we get by creating a [free MongoDB Atlas database](https://egghead.io/lessons/create-a-free-database-on-mongodb-atlas).

In order to simplify following deployments we will add a `now` key to our `package.json` where we use the `name`, `alias` and `env` parameters to configure our deployments. We will add some npm scripts so we can deploy our app in the desired way using `npm run now`.

Deploy a LoopBack API project using now.sh

In this lesson we will create a free account on monogdb.com. After the account has been created we will create a group in MongoDB Atlas and in that group we create a free cluster. In order to create the cluster we need to provide a username and password. We create our user called `admin` and have the site generate our password for use. Once the cluster is created we look at where we can find the connection string.

Create a free database on MongoDB Atlas

LoopBack is a framework built on top of Express for creating APIs. It allows you to create end-to-end REST APIs that can access data from many data sources such as MondoDB, PostgreSQL, MySQL or other REST APIs.

In this lesson you will learn how to install loopback-cli and create a new LoopBack API project. After creating the basic LoopBack project through the CLI, running the server will give us access to the project and API Explorer urls. The user model will be available to us because user authentication was enabled.

Initialize a LoopBack Node.js Project through the CLI

In this lesson we will learn how to add tests to the project to make sure our API behaves as we expect. 

After installing `mocha` and `chai` as devDependencies we will add `test` and `test:watch` scripts to our `package.json`. We will create a different datasource what we will use when running the tests by copying `datasources.json` to `datasources.test.json` and prefixing our `test` command with `NODE_ENV=test`. 

We will verify that our tests run against an empty datasource. We’ll also add various tests to verify that our remote method and validation on the Product model behave as expected.

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