Unlock the Power of PostgreSQL with Go: Building a To-Do App
Why PostgreSQL?
PostgreSQL is a powerful, open-source object-relational database system with over thirty years of active development, earning it a strong reputation for reliability, feature robustness, and performance.
Getting Started
Before we dive into the project, make sure you have the following prerequisites set up:
- Go: Install Go in your local environment as our programming language of choice.
- PostgreSQL: Install PostgreSQL for development purposes, and consider a cloud offering like AWS Aurora for production.
- pgAdmin 4: Download pgAdmin to visually manage your Postgres database.
Our Project: A Simple To-Do App
We’ll build a full-stack web application that performs CRUD operations on our Postgres database. Our to-do app will allow users to get, add, edit, and delete to-do items.
Setting Up the Server
Create a file named server.go in your project folder and add the following code:
package main
import (
"log"
"os"
"github.com/gofiber/fiber/v2"
)
func main() {
app := fiber.New()
//...
}
Adding Routes
Let’s add four methods to handle GET, POST, PUT, and DELETE operations for our app:
app.Get("/", getIndex)
app.Post("/add", postHandler)
app.Put("/edit", putHandler)
app.Delete("/delete", deleteHandler)
Defining Handlers
We’ll define these methods to handle database interactions:
func getIndex(c *fiber.Ctx) error {
//...
}
func postHandler(c *fiber.Ctx) error {
//...
}
func putHandler(c *fiber.Ctx) error {
//...
}
func deleteHandler(c *fiber.Ctx) error {
//...
}
Connecting to the Database
Let’s create a connection to our database:
import (
"database/sql"
_ "github.com/lib/pq"
)
func main() {
//...
db, err := sql.Open("postgres", "user:password@localhost/database")
if err!= nil {
log.Fatal(err)
}
defer db.Close()
}
Fleshing Out Handlers
We’ll update our handlers to accept a pointer to our database connection:
func getIndex(c *fiber.Ctx, db *sql.DB) error {
//...
}
func postHandler(c *fiber.Ctx, db *sql.DB) error {
//...
}
func putHandler(c *fiber.Ctx, db *sql.DB) error {
//...
}
func deleteHandler(c *fiber.Ctx, db *sql.DB) error {
//...
}
Configuring Views
We’ll configure our Fiber app to serve HTML views:
app.Settings.Views.Layout = "./views"
Create a folder called views and add an index.html file:
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<title>To-Do App</title>
</head>
<body>
<h1>To-Do App</h1>
<ul>
{{ range.todos }}
<li>{{. }}</li>
{{ end }}
</ul>
</body>
</html>
Adding Styles
Create a style.css file in the public folder:
body {
background-color: #f2f2f2;
}
ul {
list-style: none;
padding: 0;
margin: 0;
}
li {
padding: 10px;
border-bottom: 1px solid #ccc;
}
Starting the App
Run the app with go run main.go and visit http://localhost:3000 to see the to-do app in action!