RESTful Web API and MongoDB go for a pic nic

Why and how MongoDB is a perfect match for building your next RESTful Web API.

Transcript

1. RESTful Web APIs and MongoDB go for a picnic Nicola Iarocci @nicolaiarocci
2. Nicola Iarocci Eve REST API Framework, Cerberus, Events Co-founder @ gestionaleamica.com, Book Author, MongoDB Master
3. Nicola Iarocci TL;DR Passionate full stack developer
4. Il Piccolo
   Libro di MongoDB edizione italiana del libro di Karl Seguin disponibile per il download @ nicolaiarocci.com
5. gestionaleamica.com invoicing & accounting
6. your typical old school desktop application gestionaleamica.com
8. gestionaleamica.com now going web and mobile
9. gestionaleamica.com “ we need a remote API to keep everything in sync ” A-ha moment
10. Before Client LAN/SQL Database Desktop! Application
11. Initial draft Clients “Cloud” Database RESTful ! Web API API iOS Android Website Desktop Client ? ?
12. Constraints • minimum viable product first • add features over time • frequent database schema updates • avoid downtime as much as possible
13. So we started exploring new paths
14. MongoDB and REST ! or why we picked MongoDB for our REST API
15. true selling point for me JSON-style data store
16. all client to API communication is going to be JSON JSON for transport
17. JSON & RESTful API JSON! accepted media type Client JSON! (BSON) Mongo GET maybe we can push directly to client?
18. JSON & RESTful API JSON! accepted media type Client JSON! (BSON) Mongo JSON! subset of python dict! (kinda) API GET almost.
19. JSON & RESTful API JSON! objects Client JSON! (BSON) Mongo JSON/dict! maps to python dict! (validation layer) API POST also works when posting (adding) items to the database
20. made NoSQL easy to grasp (even for a dumbhead like me) Similarity with RDBMS
21. Terminology RDBMS Mongo Database Database Table Collection Rows(s) JSON Document Index Index Join Embedding & Linking
22. Queries in MongoDB are represented as JSON-style objects What about Queries? // select * from things where x=3 and y="foo" db.things.find({x: 3, y: "foo”});
23. Filtering and Sorting native! Mongo! query syntax Client JSON! (BSON) Mongo (very) thin parsing! & validation layer API let’s simply expose MongoDB syntax ?where={x: 3, y: "foo”}
24. mapping to and from the database feels more natural JSON all along the pipeline
25. Where we’re going we don’t need ORMs. ORM
26. dynamic documents allow for painless, progressive evolution Schema-less
27. MongoDB drivers are beautiful. Really. PyMongo
28. Also in MongoDB • setup is a breeze • lightweight • fast inserts, updates and queries • excellent documentation • great support by 10gen • great community
29. REST in practice ! with some MongoDB love
30. Collections API entry point + plural nouns api.example.com/contacts Maps to a Mongo collection
31. Document API entry point + plural nouns + ID api.example.com/contacts/4f46445fc88e201858000000 Maps to a collection ObjectID
32. Retrieving Resoruce Data GET
33. def get_collection(collection):! documents = []! cursor = db(collection).find(where, projection)! for document in cursor:! documents.append(document)! return documents Resource GET find() accepts a python dict as query expression, and returns a cursor we can iterate /contacts?where={“age”: {“$gt”: 20}}&projection={“lastname”: 1}
34. def get_collection(collection):! documents = []! cursor = db(collection).find(where, projection)! for document in cursor:! documents.append(document)! return documents Resource GET find() accepts a python dict as query expression, and returns a cursor we can iterate /contacts?where={“age”: {“$gt”: 20}}&projection={“lastname”: 1}
35. def get_collection(collection):! documents = []! cursor = db(collection).find(where, projection)! for document in cursor:! documents.append(document)! return documents Resource GET find() accepts a python dict as query expression, and returns a cursor we can iterate /contacts?where={“age”: {“$gt”: 20}}&projection={“lastname”: 1}
36. JSON Rendering
37. JSON Rendering straight from Mongo
38. JSON Rendering
39. Editing a Document PATCH
40. PATCHing mongo update() method commits updates to the database. def patch_document(collection, original):! (...)! # Perform the update! db(collection).update({"_Id": ObjectId(object_id)}, ! {"$set": updates})!
41. PATCHing udpate() takes the unique Id of the document to update def patch_document(collection, original):! (...)! # Perform the update! db(collection).update({"_Id": ObjectId(object_id)}, ! {"$set": updates})!
42. PATCHing def patch_document(collection, original):! (...)! # Perform the update! db(collection).update({"_Id": ObjectId(object_id)}, ! {"$set": updates})! $set accepts a dict! with the updates for the db eg: {“active”: False}. updates are atomic
43. Creating Resources POST
44. def post(collection):! (...)! for key, item in docs.items():! response[ID_FIELD] = db(collection).insert(item) POSTing Take #1 push document and get its ObjectId back from Mongo. like other CRUD operations, inserting is trivial in mongo.
45. POSTing Take #2 Bulk inserts!! (let’s look at the code)
46. after a lot of tinkering we released an ambitious open source project
47. Eve REST API Framework powered by Flask, MongoDB and good intentions python-eve.org
48. Beta 0.2 • 1.000+ stargazers • 120 forks • 24 contributors • 7.935 downloads
49. Eve Extensions contributed by the community • Eve-ElasticSearch • Eve-SQLAlchemy • Eve-Docs • Eve-Mocks
50. Wanna see it running? Hopefully it won’t explode right into my face
51. Initial draft Clients “Cloud” Database RESTful ! Web API API iOS Android Website Desktop Client ? ?
52. Clients MongoDB Database Adam! eve instance API iOS Android Website Desktop Client Production
53. MongoDB Rocks! your RESTful Web API
54. Thank you. nicolaiarocci