To run through this exercise, you will need to have done the following steps:
Prerequisite 1: Installed the API Connect toolkit (Exercise 1).
Prerequisite 2: Generated a LoopBack app (Exercise 3).
Prerequisite 3: Created a database service on Bluemix and connected it to your LoopBack app (Exercise 4).
In this exercise we will create simple CRUD-based APIs around the employees database.
Ensure that you are in the LoopBack directory you created in Exercise 3
cd <path-to-hol-folder>/apichol/exercises/ex4/loopbackapp
The API Connect Designer is a GUI that allows developers to graphically create and manage their APIs.
apic edit
After a brief pause, the following message is displayed.
Express server listening on http://127.0.0.1:9000
The API Designer opens in your default web browser. If it prompts you to login, use your IBM Bluemix credentials.
Click on the Data Sources tab. Hit the "Add" button, and choose name for your database - "mysql-db".
In the connector tab, choose "MySQL". It'll prompt you to install the connector; simply follow the prompts.
If the previous step did not work, continue with this step. Otherwise, proceed below.
Work-Around: If you saw an error, switch back to your terminal. Use Ctrl+C to end the apic edit instance. This shuts down the API Designer Toolkit. Then, type the command npm i --save loopback-connector-mysql to manually install the LoopBack connector for MySQL databases. Then, run apic edit again, switch to the Databases tab, open your mysql-db entry, and continue below.
Enter the database credentials you noted in Exercise 4. Enter the uri credential into the url field and your name credential into the Database field.
Hit the Save button on the top-right. This should test your database connection and alert you if your credentials are incorrect or if the connection was unable to be made.
Let's create a model so that you're able to perform CRUD (Create/Read/Update/Delete) operations against your MySQL database. Go to the Models tab and add a new model by clicking the add button. Name it employees.
Choose the mysql-db Data Source, and enter the following properties:
We are about to create a LoopBack model representation of the MySQL database. The name of the model employees refers to the table name in the MySQL database. The various property names refer to the MySQL "fields". The types translate to MySQL fields -- for example, String to VARCHAR. Key in LoopBack is similar to Key in MySQL.
Hit the Save button on the top right to create the model. That's it! Once a model is created, the APIs to represent that model are automatically generated for you.
We just created APIs around the employees database.
In the next exercise, we will test your new APIs by starting the LoopBack application locally and use an interactive OpenAPI explorer to call your APIs!
Next up, Exercise 6: Test, Explore and Deploy your LoopBack application