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  • Express with Async/Await

My preferred way to use node-postgres (and all async code in node.js) is with async/await. I find it makes reasoning about control-flow easier and allows me to write more concise and maintainable code.

This is how I typically structure express web-applications with node-postgres to use async/await:

- app.js - index.js - routes/  - index.js  - photos.js  - user.js - db/  - index.js <--- this is where I put data access code

That's the same structure I used in the project structure example.

My db/index.js file usually starts out like this:

import { Pool } from 'pg'   const pool = new Pool()   export const query = (text, params) => pool.query(text, params)

Then I will install express-promise-router and use it to define my routes. Here is my routes/user.js file:

import Router from 'express-promise-router' import db from '../db.js'   // create a new express-promise-router // this has the same API as the normal express router except // it allows you to use async functions as route handlers const router = new Router()   // export our router to be mounted by the parent application export default router   router.get('/:id', async (req, res) => {  const { id } = req.params  const { rows } = await db.query('SELECT * FROM users WHERE id = $1', [id])  res.send(rows[0]) })

Then in my routes/index.js file I'll have something like this which mounts each individual router into the main application:

// ./routes/index.js import users from './user.js' import photos from './photos.js'   const mountRoutes = (app) => {  app.use('/users', users)  app.use('/photos', photos)  // etc.. }   export default mountRoutes

And finally in my app.js file where I bootstrap express I will have my routes/index.js file mount all my routes. The routes know they're using async functions but because of express-promise-router the main express app doesn't know and doesn't care!

// ./app.js import express from 'express' import mountRoutes from './routes.js'   const app = express() mountRoutes(app)   // ... more express setup stuff can follow

Now you've got async/await, node-postgres, and express all working together!

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