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Integrating Sequelize into our stack

We have just set up a MySQL database, and we want to use it inside of our Node.js back end. There are many libraries to connect and query your MySQL database. We are going to use Sequelize in this book.

Alternatives include Waterline ORM and js-data, which offer the same functionalities as Sequelize. What's great about these is that they not only offer SQL dialects, but also feature database adapters for MongoDB, Redis, and more. So, if you need an alternative, check them out.

Sequelize is an ORM for Node.js. It supports the PostgreSQL, MySQL, SQLite, and MSSQL standards.

Install Sequelize in your project via npm. We will also install a second package, called mysql2:

npm install --save sequelize mysql2

The mysql2 package allows Sequelize to speak with our MySQL server.

Sequelize is just a wrapper around the various libraries for the different database systems. It offers great features for intuitive model usage, as well as functions for creating and updating database structures and inserting development data.

Typically, you would run sequelize init before starting with the database connection or models, but I prefer a more custom approach. From my point of view, this is a bit cleaner. This approach is also why we are setting up the database connection in an extra file, and do not rely on boilerplate code.

You can take a look at the official tutorial in the Sequelize documentation if you want to see how it would usually be done. The approach that we are taking and the one from the tutorial do not differ much, but it is always good to see another way of doing things. The documentation can be seen at http://docs.sequelizejs.com/manual/tutorial/migrations.html.

Let's start by setting Sequelize up in our backend.