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.

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.

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