#Lesson 4 In-Class Exercises Today we will be playing around with mongoDB by writing mongoose queries, before moving on to working with mongoose in your cat app.
If you find useful resources online while you're working on these exercises, please post them in the #olinjs slack channel!
##Queries in Mongoose In mongoose, you create a schema to define the structure of your mongo collection. For this exercise, you will be working with a schema that has various robot features.
var robotSchema = mongoose.Schema({
name: String,
abilities: [String],
isEvil: Boolean
});Follow along at the end of the Readme to connect a copy of your boilerplate app to mongoose. Try writing out a few queries to select certain robots, and pass them to render in a handlebars file. You can now use mongo/mongoose to persist data for any application.
##Advanced Queries Now that you've got the basics of mongoose working, organize into groups and have each member research an advanced mongoose query to present to the group. You can implement this if you want, or move on to working on the cat app (where you will eventually need to implement an advanced query for this weeks homework).
We're defining an advanced query as something that builds on basic queries by using query operators such as and and or. You can find a full list of query operators here. You can also see examples of what that looks like in mongoose syntax at the main queries doc page and in the page dedicated to building specific queries.
##Cat App Once you are comfortable with using mongoose in your boilerplate application and building different types of queries, start working on integrating a database into your cat app. Follow the getting started guide that mongoose provides to hook the in-class app up to your database.
In groups, discuss the models you will use to store data for your cat app. It can be helpful to diagram your models on the board.
After you have decided on your model and created a schema, hook the cat creation route in your cat app up to mongoose. Once you have this working, try connecting your cat app to a partner's cat app database.
We'd love your feedback on today's class -- fill out this survey if you'd like!