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Francisco Mendes
Francisco Mendes

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How to Build REST API using Go Fiber and Gorm ORM

Overview

In the past I have written several articles about how we can interact with relational databases, however they were all for the JavaScript and TypeScript community. So this week I will share with you how we can create a simple API and perform a CRUD on a specific table in our database, this time in Go.

In this article, as in other articles I've written in the past in Golang, we'll use the Fiber framework, it's quite simple to use, has a good abstraction layer and contains everything we need to create our API.

Regarding the interaction with the database, I decided to use an ORM to make the whole process simpler and more intuitive and for that reason I decided to use Gorm, which in my opinion is the most popular ORM in the Go universe and has a great range of features.

Let's code

In today's example we are going to install only three dependencies, which are as follows:

go get github.com/gofiber/fiber/v2
go get gorm.io/gorm
go get gorm.io/driver/mysql
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As you may have noticed, in this example I installed the MySQL driver because the database I have running in a docker container is MariaDB, however there are also drivers available for PostgreSQL and SQLite.

Now let's start by defining our Entity, which will have a total of four properties:

  • Name - the name of the dog
  • Age - the age of our four legged friend
  • Breed - our friend's race
  • IsGoodBoy - whether our friend has been a good boy or not

Similar to the following:

// @/entities/dog.go
package entities

import "gorm.io/gorm"

type Dog struct {
    gorm.Model
    Name      string `json:"name"`
    Breed     string `json:"breed"`
    Age       int    `json:"age"`
    IsGoodBoy bool   `json:"isGoodBoy" gorm:"default:true"`
}
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Now we can proceed to the configuration of the connection with the database. In this case I like to create a function called Connect() that will be responsible for initializing the connection, besides that it will also be responsible for performing the migrations in our database. This way:

// @/config/database.go
package config

import (
    "github.com/FranciscoMendes10866/gorm/entities"
    "gorm.io/driver/mysql"
    "gorm.io/gorm"
)

var Database *gorm.DB
var DATABASE_URI string = "root:root@tcp(localhost:3306)/gorm?charset=utf8mb4&parseTime=True&loc=Local"

func Connect() error {
    var err error

    Database, err = gorm.Open(mysql.Open(DATABASE_URI), &gorm.Config{
        SkipDefaultTransaction: true,
        PrepareStmt:            true,
    })

    if err != nil {
        panic(err)
    }

    Database.AutoMigrate(&entities.Dog{})

    return nil
}
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Now that we have our Entity defined and the connection to our database configured, we can start working on our handlers. Each of our handlers will correspond to a route from our API, so each one will be responsible for executing only one operation. First let's get all the records we have in our database table.

// @/handlers/dog.go
package handlers

import (
    "github.com/FranciscoMendes10866/gorm/config"
    "github.com/FranciscoMendes10866/gorm/entities"
    "github.com/gofiber/fiber/v2"
)

func GetDogs(c *fiber.Ctx) error {
    var dogs []entities.Dog

    config.Database.Find(&dogs)
    return c.Status(200).JSON(dogs)
}

// ...
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Now let's get just one record according to the id parameter that will be sent in the request parameters.

// @/handlers/dog.go
package handlers

// ...

func GetDog(c *fiber.Ctx) error {
    id := c.Params("id")
    var dog entities.Dog

    result := config.Database.Find(&dog, id)

    if result.RowsAffected == 0 {
        return c.SendStatus(404)
    }

    return c.Status(200).JSON(&dog)
}

// ...
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Now that we can get all the records and also just one record. We lack the functionality to insert a new one in the database table.

// @/handlers/dog.go
package handlers

// ...

func AddDog(c *fiber.Ctx) error {
    dog := new(entities.Dog)

    if err := c.BodyParser(dog); err != nil {
        return c.Status(503).SendString(err.Error())
    }

    config.Database.Create(&dog)
    return c.Status(201).JSON(dog)
}

// ...
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We still need to add the functionality to update an existing record in our database. And similar to what we've already implemented, let's use the id parameter to update the specific record.

// @/handlers/dog.go
package handlers

// ...

func UpdateDog(c *fiber.Ctx) error {
    dog := new(entities.Dog)
    id := c.Params("id")

    if err := c.BodyParser(dog); err != nil {
        return c.Status(503).SendString(err.Error())
    }

    config.Database.Where("id = ?", id).Updates(&dog)
    return c.Status(200).JSON(dog)
}

// ...
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Last but not least, we need to delete a specific record, again we will use the id parameter to remove the specific record from our database.

// @/handlers/dog.go
package handlers

// ...

func RemoveDog(c *fiber.Ctx) error {
    id := c.Params("id")
    var dog entities.Dog

    result := config.Database.Delete(&dog, id)

    if result.RowsAffected == 0 {
        return c.SendStatus(404)
    }

    return c.SendStatus(200)
}

// ...
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Now we just need to create our main file that will be responsible for initializing the connection to the database and where our API routes will be defined and a handler will be associated to each one of them.

// @/main.go
package main

import (
    "log"

    "github.com/FranciscoMendes10866/gorm/config"
    "github.com/FranciscoMendes10866/gorm/handlers"
    "github.com/gofiber/fiber/v2"
)

func main() {
    app := fiber.New()

    config.Connect()

    app.Get("/dogs", handlers.GetDogs)
    app.Get("/dogs/:id", handlers.GetDog)
    app.Post("/dogs", handlers.AddDog)
    app.Put("/dogs/:id", handlers.UpdateDog)
    app.Delete("/dogs/:id", handlers.RemoveDog)

    log.Fatal(app.Listen(":3000"))
}
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Conclusion

As always, I hope you found it interesting. If you noticed any errors in this article, please mention them in the comments. 🧑🏻‍💻

Hope you have a great day! 🚨

Top comments (7)

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shedrack_abel_1fbd243bdf4 profile image
Shedrack Abel

This is the best tutorial on building rest api with golang i've seen so far

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zakariachahboun profile image
zakaria chahboun

Cool
did you try Golobby ORM?

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goodylili profile image
Ukeje Chukwuemeriwo Goodness

This is a great resource; especially that it's up to date
Thank you for this

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qwe321 profile image
qwe321389yfs8t7huqd89q

Why importing local packages as github.com/FranciscoMendes10866/gorm ?

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franciscomendes10866 profile image
Francisco Mendes

It's just a preference of creating/initializing the project/module (I have an idea that it's quite common in the community) 🌵 But I prefer it to be something simpler, like "rest-api" 🤓

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rngallen profile image
Luqman Jr

Why database connection was not closed?

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veronb profile image
Veron Baranige

It will close automatically when the server is stopped. If we were to create a new database connection for every operation it will take unnecessary time. What most do is create the connection at the start of the server and share that connection across all CRUD operations.