rest-on-mongo

rest-on-mongo is a REST API layer over MongoDB.

About

The need for a REST API interface to MongoDB came up when we wanted to access our MongoDB database directly from Google Sheets. The solutions out there were either using Stitch (a service provided by a hosted version of MongoDB) or using tools no longer maintained, or tools that did not support bulk updates and multiple databases. None of them worked for us. And we felt that this was such a common need that there had to be an open-source package for it.

So we built it.

Upgrading from v1.x.x

v2.0 has breaking changes in the way BSON data types are handled. We no longer support automatic conversion of date-like strings to Date objects. The v1.0 functions for converting strings starting with a $ character to specific data types are also no longer supported.

Disclaimer

The API is really REST-ish and not pure REST. The verbs supported are a little more than what pure REST would recommend. But the extra support is quite convenient as we found out.

Installation

npm install rest-on-mongo

There are two ways to use rest-on-mongo. You can just run the built-in server (which should work for most needs, because it has lots of configuration options), or you can use it as a library and build your own server.

Using the built-in server

After installation, just run:

npx rest-on-mongo

You will now have a full-fledged REST API server, using the default configuration: an unauthenticated server on port 8000 which will give you access to a database called test in a MongoDB instance running on the localhost.

Try it out

Insert a document in a collection called example in the database test:

curl -X POST --data '{ "_id": 1, "value": "some value" }' http://localhost:8000/example

Read back the document from the collection:

curl http://localhost:8000/example/1

This will return the document { "_id": 1, "value": "some value" } which was just inserted.

Configuration

The server can be started in one of the following modes:

1. Single database (as in the above example), which can be accessed like http://localhost:8000/collection/_id
2. Multiple databases, each under a prefix in the route, accessed like http://localhost:8000/prefix/collection/_id
3. Multiple servers and databases in a hierarchy of roures accessed like http://localhost:8000/server-name/database/collection/_id

All the configuration is in environment variables. You can set these using export VAR=value or, write the definitions in a file called .env since we use dotenv.

Variable name	DBs	Default	Notes
AUTH_TOKEN	Any	(No auth)	Authentication token (or API Key)
BASE	Any	/	The base endpoint, e.g., /api/v1
MAX_BODY_SIZE	Any	10mb	limit for body-parser
PORT	Any	8000	HTTP Port to start the server on
READ_ONLY	Any	no	Exposes only GET methods
SERVER	Any	mongodb://localhost	MongoDB connection URI
DB	Single	test	Name of the one and only database
PREFIXES	Multiple		A comma separated list of prefixes
READ_ONLY_<prefix>	Multiple	READ_ONLY	Overrides READ_ONLY per <prefix>
SERVER_<prefix>	Multiple	SERVER	Overrides SERVER per <prefix>
DB_<prefix>	Multiple	<prefix>	Name of the database for <prefix>

Note that prefixes can also be of the form server-name/db, in which case the <prefix> for all SERVER env variables will become the server part and that for the DB ones will become the db part. If the prefixes are of the form a,b,c*x,y,z it will be expanded to a cartesian product like a/x, a/y etc.

Example 1 (Multiple servers and DBs)

Contents of the .env file:

AUTH_TOKEN=secret
PORT=3000
PREFIXES=localtest,localcontent,remotetest,remotecontent
# SERVER_localtest=mongodb://localhost
# DB_localtest=test
# SERVER_localcontent=mongodb://localhost
DB_localcontent=content
SERVER_remotetest=mongodb://user:[e-mail]
# DB_remotetest=test
SERVER_remotecontent=mongodb://user:[e-mail]
DB_remotecontent=content

This will configure a server in the multiple databases mode. Now, to access the example collection in the local test database, you will need to do the following:

curl -H 'Authorization: Bearer secret' http://localhost:3000/local-test/example/1

And, to access the same collection in the content database in the remote server, you would do:

curl -H 'Authorization: Bearer secret' http://localhost:3000/remote-content/example/1

Example 2 (Single)

SERVER=mongodb://user:[e-mail]
DB=content
BASE=/api/v1
READ_ONLY=yes

This will configure a server with no authentication in the single database mode, so no prefix is needed to select the database. But a standard base prefix api/v1 is needed for all APIs. Further, HTTP methods other than GET will not be supported because READ_ONLY was set to yes.

In this mode, to get a document, this is what you would do:

curl http://localhost:8000/api/v1/example/1

Example 3 (Multiple DBs in one server)

SERVER=mongodb://user:[e-mail]
PREFIXES=hr,sales
DB_hr=humanresources
# DB_sales=sales

This will configure a server with no authentication in the multiple database mode, with a single server. The DB_xxx environment variable is not required since it matches the prefix, whereas the DB_hr variable is required.

Example 4 (Same DBs in multiple servers)

PREFIXES=prod/sales,prod/warehouse,staging/sales,staging/warehouse,local/sales,local/warehouse
# Can also be written as PREFIXES=prod,staging,local*sales,warehouse
SERVER_prod=mongodb+srv://user:[e-mail]
SERVER_staging=mongodb://user:[e-mail]
# SERVER_local=localhost
READ_ONLY_prod_sales=yes

In this mode, this is what you would do to fetch an invoice document from the sales database in the production server:

curl http://localhost:8000/prod/sales/invoices/INV0001

Notes

• Multiple prefixes can connect to the same server+database. Although supported, this is useless.
• None of the environment variables are required. A server as in the Quick Start section above will be started if no environment variables are found.
• Since the shell does not allow usage of special characters (-, . and /) in environment variable names, you should use an _ instead of - in the names where there is these characters exist in the prefix (which is indeed allowed).

Using rest-on-mongo as a library

You may want to create your own server if you need something different from rest-on-mongo's built-in server. For example, you may already have a server and you'd like an additional router endpoint. Or, you may not like the default authorization mechanism, and you want to use your own.

rest-on-mongo exports three things:

1. server: The entire server, which can be used to start the server, or mount the middleware in your own app. Methods available are server.start() and server.routes().
2. restRoutes: The REST routes, a lower level access to the REST handlers. Methods available are restRoutes.all() and restRoutes.readOnly().
3. tokenAuth: An authentication middleware generator function. Pass a string to this function to obtain a function that authenticates against this string. An HTTP Authorization Header of type Bearer will be expected in all requests.

Example: mimic the rest-on-mongo command line

To replicate the behaviour of the rest-on-mongo command-line, you could do the following:

const { server } = require('rest-on-mongo');
server.start();

Example: add rest-on-mongo's REST APIs to an existing app

To mount the REST APIs in your own app (using the environment variables configuration), rather than start an independent server, you could do:

const { server } = require('rest-on-mongo');
const express = require('express');
const myApp = require('./app'); // Your app with its own handlers

const app = express();
app.use('/app', myApp); // mount your app on /app
app.use('/dbadmin', server.routes()); // mount rest-on-mongo on /dbadmin

Example: do it yourself

To get an even lower level access to the REST routes, you could do:

const mongodb = require('mongodb');
const express = require('express');
const { restRoutes, tokenAuth } = require('rest-on-mongo');
const myApp = require('./app'); // Your app with its own handlers

const app = express();
app.use('/app', myApp); // mount your app on /app

// Authenticate using rest-on-mongo's default auth mechanism
app.use('/dbadmin', tokenAuth('somesecret'));

// Inject a database connection, this is required!
const client = new MongoClient('mongodb://db.example.com');
client.connect();
const db = client.db('mydatabase');
app.use('/dbadmin', (req, res, next) => {
  req.db = db;
  next();
}

// Install all the library's REST routes
app.use('/dbadmin', restRoutes.all());  // Or, use restRoutes.readOnly()

// Start the server
app.listen(8000, () => {
  console.log(`API server started on port 8000`);
});

The REST APIs (or Routes)

Quick Reference

Method	Path	Request body	What it does
POST	/collection/_id	{...}	Inserts a document at _id
POST	/collection	{"_id": 1, ...}	Inserts a document with the given _id
		{...}	Inserts a document with an autogenerated _id
		[{...}, ...]	Inserts many documents
GET	/collection/_id		Gets a single document
GET	/collection		Gets documents matching the query-string filter
PATCH	/collection/_id	{...}	Udates document at _id using MongoDB $set
PATCH	/collection	[{"_id": 1, ...}, ...]	Batch updates multiple documents
PUT	/collection/_id	{...}	Replaces document at _id
PUT	/collection	[{"_id": 1, ...}, ...]	Batch replaces multiple documents
DELETE	/collection/_id		Deletes document at _id
DELETE	/collection		Deletes objects matching the query-string filter

The _id parameter

The _id parameter will be used as is, as a string, except in the following cases:

• The value happens to be a valid integer. In this case, parseInt will be used to convert it to an integer.
• The value happens to be in the ObjectId format. In this case, ObjectId() will be used to convert it to a MongoDB ObjectId.
• If the value starts with the single-quote character (') the single-quote character will be stripped and the rest of the value will be used as a string. This is useful if you want to force an integer value to be used as a string.

Common error responses

• Except for the Create (POST) operation, When using the collection/_id way of identifying a document, if the document does not exist, an HTTP 404 (Not Found) error is returned.
• For invalid requests (e.g., missing _id parameter in the request body), an HTTP 400 (Bad Request) error is returned. The response body will be a JSON with additional details.

Create (POST)

Creates one or more objects. Specifying the primary key is optional, just like the MongoDB insert operation. A primary key will be generated if not specified.

Variants:

1. collection/_id, {}: Inserts a document (body) with primary key _id request body need not have it.
2. collection, {}: When the request body is an object, a single document is inserted. If the document contains an _id, it is used as the primary key, otherwise the primary key is generated just like the MongoDB insert command.
3. collection, [], request body is an array: Each document is inserted using MongoDB insertMany. The primary key, _id, will be generated if not supplied.

Notes:

• These methods will not update or replace an existing document with _id, if it exists. In other words, this is not an upsert operation. The operation will fail with a 400 HTTP status.
• In a bulk operation, if any supplied _id document exists, the entire operation will fail.

Success response:

{
   "result" : {
      "ok" : 1,
   }
   "insertedCount" : 2,
   "insertedIds" : {
      "0" : 1,
      "1" : "5e635b1d7a189f6a101e67ad"
   },
}

Failure response (in case of a duplicate key):

{
  "status": "error",
  "error": {
    "code" : 11000,
    "errmsg" : "E11000 duplicate key error collection: test.test index: _id_ dup key: { _id: 1 }",
    "index" : 0
  }
}

Read (GET)

Returns one ore more objects from a collection.

Variants:

1. collection/_id: Gets the single document.
2. collection, [?<query>]: We use query-params-mongo for parsing the filter specification. Note that this has sorting and pagination support too. For the filter, the MongoDB filter can be specified directly in a parameter named __filter.

Returns:

• Success: A single object or an array of objects, either of which can be empty.
• Failure: In case of a single document request, a HTTP Status 404 is is returned if the object with the given ID is not found. In case of multiple document request, HTTP status 200 with an empty array is returned.

Update (PATCH)

Updates one or more documents with changes specified as in MongoDB's $set operator. In case of multiple documents, each document's update specification needs to be specified differently. This is not the same as MongoDB's update command, It is, instead, a bulk write operation.

Variants:

1. collection/_id: Updates a single document using MongoDB $set operator using the request body.
2. collection: The request body must be an array of objects, each with an _id field. The rest of the object will be supplied to the $set operator.

Success response:

{
  result: {
    ok: 1
  },
  matchedCount: 0,
  modifiedCount: 0
}

Failure response (Missing IDs):

{
  status: 'error',
  statusCode: 400,
  message: 'Missing _id in update (index 0)'
}

Replace (PUT)

Replaces one more more documents with the given document(s). This is also a bulk write operation like the Update (PATCH) operation.

Variants:

1. collection/_id: Replaces a single document identified by _id with the one given in the request body.
2. collection: The request body is expected to be an array of objects, with each object containing an _id field, which will identify the document and replace it with the given one. Non-existent documents will be created, as in an upsert operation.

Success response:

{
  result: {
    ok: 1,
    nModified: 0,
    nUpserted: 1
  },
  matchedCount: 0,
  modifiedCount: 1
}

Failure response (Missing IDs):

{
  status: 'error',
  statusCode: 400,
  message: 'Missing _id in update (index 0)'
}

Delete (DELETE)

Deletes one or more documents. To delete multiple documents, an optional filter selects the documents to be deleted.

Variants:

1. collection/_id: Deletes a single document identified by _id.
2. collection, [?<query>]: Clears the entire collection or a filtered subset described by the filter in the query params. We use query-params-mongo for parsing the query string to get a filter. Or, the MongoDB filter can be specified directly in a parameter named __filter.

Returns:

{
  result: {
    ok: 1
  },
  deletedCount: 1
}

BSON data types

The request body is parsed using mongodb-extjson, so data types that are native to MongoDB but not supported by the JSON format can also be specified. The Extended JSON documentation has a detailed specification of all the data types.

A few common ones are described here:

Type	Example	Resulting Value
ObjectId	{ "id": { "$oid: "5ecce33370eef71be8ba4b5a" }	ObjectId("5ecce33370eef71be8ba4b5a")
Long	{ "n": { "$numberLong": "1584963168000" }	NumberLong(1584963168000)
Date	{ "t": { "$date": "2020-01-01T12:13:14.123Z" }	ISODate("2020-01-01T12:13:14.123Z")
	{ "d": { "$date": { "numberLong": "1593159811000" } }	ISODate("2020-06-26T08:23:31Z")