LoopBack 4 Todo Application Tutorial - Add a Repository
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Repositories

The repository pattern is one of the more fundamental differences between LoopBack 3 and 4. In LoopBack 3, you would use the model class definitions themselves to perform CRUD operations. In LoopBack 4, the layer responsible for this has been separated from the definition of the model itself, into the repository layer.

A Repository represents a specialized Service interface that provides strong-typed data access (for example, CRUD) operations of a domain model against the underlying database or service.

For more information about Repositories, see Repositories.

Create your repository

In the src/repositories directory, create two files:

  • index.ts (our export helper)
  • todo.repository.ts

NOTE: The index.ts file is an export helper file; this pattern is a huge time-saver as the number of models in your project grows, because it allows you to point to the directory when attempting to import types from a file within the target folder. We will use this concept throughout the tutorial! For more info, see TypeScript’s Module Resolution docs.

// in src/models/index.ts
export * from './foo.model';
export * from './bar.model';
export * from './baz.model';

// elsewhere...

// with index.ts
import {Foo, Bar, Baz} from './models';
// ...and without index.ts
import {Foo} from './models/foo.model';
import {Bar} from './models/bar.model';
import {Baz} from './models/baz.model';
// Using an index.ts in your artifact folders really helps keep
// things tidy and succinct!

Our TodoRepository will extend a small base class that uses the DefaultCrudRepository class from @loopback/repository and will define the model type we’re working with, as well as its ID type. This automatically gives us the basic CRUD methods required for performing operations against our database (or any other kind of datasource).

We’ll also inject our datasource so that this repository can connect to it when executing data operations.

src/repositories/todo.repository.ts

import {DefaultCrudRepository, juggler} from '@loopback/repository';
import {Todo} from '../models';
import {inject} from '@loopback/core';

export class TodoRepository extends DefaultCrudRepository<
  Todo,
  typeof Todo.prototype.id
> {
  constructor(
    @inject('datasources.db') protected datasource: juggler.DataSource,
  ) {
    super(Todo, datasource);
  }
}

Now we have everything we need to perform CRUD operations for our Todo list, we’ll need to build the Controller to handle our incoming requests.

Previous step: Add a datasource

Next step: Add a controller