It's becoming quite common to have multiple databases when building a web application. Especially when designing your app with micro services.
Whenever possible, we strongly advise to have one and only one SQL database to facilitate native joins between your relationships.
Lumber relies on the Sequelize ORM to access and manipulate your data. With Sequelize, you can easily connect to multiple databases and create your models accordingly.
1. Update the models/index.js file
To do so, you first need to update the file models/index.js which is where the logic to connect to the database(s) and load your models is implemented.
At the moment, you should have a models/ directory that looks like this:
Command line
Output
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ls -l models
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total 80
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-rw-r--r-- 1 seyz staff 741 Oct 12 12:19 addresses.js
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-rw-r--r-- 1 seyz staff 658 Oct 12 12:19 appointments.js
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-rw-r--r-- 1 seyz staff 1154 Oct 19 14:22 companies.js
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-rw-r--r-- 1 seyz staff 606 Oct 12 12:19 customers.js
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-rw-r--r-- 1 seyz staff 601 Oct 12 12:19 deliveries.js
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-rw-r--r-- 1 seyz staff 408 Oct 12 12:19 documents.js
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-rw-r--r-- 1 seyz staff 1281 Oct 12 12:19 index.js
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-rw-r--r-- 1 seyz staff 1114 Oct 12 12:19 orders.js
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-rw-r--r-- 1 seyz staff 543 Oct 12 12:19 products.js
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-rw-r--r-- 1 seyz staff 1239 Oct 12 12:19 transactions.js
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Move all your models file to a directory named exactly by the database alias name you chose on the models/index.js file (Step 1). In our case here, it's demo.
Command line
Output
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tree models
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models
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├── demo
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│  ├── addresses.js
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│  ├── appointments.js
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│  ├── companies.js
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│  ├── customers.js
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│  ├── deliveries.js
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│  ├── documents.js
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│  ├── orders.js
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│  ├── products.js
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│  └── transactions.js
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└── index.js
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Make sure you keep the index.js file in the models/ directory.
Then, create a directory for each of your database and create the Sequelize models that map your tables.
You can take inspiration from the existing models to create your new ones or read the Sequelize documentation about Model definition.
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module.exports=(sequelize, DataTypes)=>{
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const Model = sequelize.define('billings',{
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'customer_id':{
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type: DataTypes.INTEGER,
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},
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'VAT':{
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type: DataTypes.STRING,
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},
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'address':{
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type: DataTypes.STRING,
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},
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'zip_code':{
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type: DataTypes.STRING,
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},
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'state':{
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type: DataTypes.STRING,
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},
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'city':{
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type: DataTypes.STRING,
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},
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},{
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tableName:'billings',
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underscored:true
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});
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​
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Model.associate=(models)=>{
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};
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​
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return Model;
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};
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3. Update the Forest middleware options
You need to indicate to the Forest middleware all the database connections. To do so, update the middlewares/forestadmin/index.js file and add/change the options sequelize and connections.
middlewares/forestadmin.js
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const requireAll =require('require-all');
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const chalk =require('chalk');
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const path =require('path');
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const Liana =require('forest-express-sequelize');
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const models =require('../models');
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​
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module.exports=asyncfunction(app){
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app.use(await Liana.init({
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modelsDir: path.join(__dirname,'../models'),
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configDir: path.join(__dirname,'../forest'),
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envSecret: process.env.FOREST_ENV_SECRET,
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authSecret: process.env.FOREST_AUTH_SECRET,
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sequelize: models.Sequelize,
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connections:[
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models.sequelize.demo,
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models.sequelize.billing
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],
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}));
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​
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console.log(chalk.cyan('Your admin panel is available here: https://app.forestadmin.com/projects'));
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};
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4. Replace models.<modelName> everywhere
You can't use the syntax models.<modelName> anymore to trigger CRUD operations on your data. On our example, the action Mark as live is broken.
stacktrace
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POST /forest/actions/mark-as-live 50010.501 ms - 3264
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TypeError: Cannot read property 'update' of undefined
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at router.post (/Users/seyz/workspace/lumber-projects/QuickStart/routes/companies.js:14:6)
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To fix this issue, we have to import the databases' connections on top of each file and change the syntax of the models' references like this:
.then(()=> res.send({ success:'Company is now live!'}));
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});
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5. Create relationships between two models from different databases
Adding a belongsTo relationship
The main problem of having two databases is that you cannot rely on SQL joins anymore to browser your data over relationships.
To fix that, we will create a belongsTo Smart Relationship and code the logic to reconcile the data between our Customers (database demo) and Billings (database billings).
The main problem of having two databases is that you cannot rely on SQL joins anymore to browser your data over relationships.
As above, we will create a hasMany Smart Relationship and code the logic to reconcile the data between our Companies (database companies) and Users (database users ).