Workshop_Steps.md

Workshop Steps

This guide outlines all the steps required to complete the workshop.

Outline

• A. Get started - clone the repo & install dependencies
  • Terminal 1
  • Terminal 2
• B. Get your free Kintone database
• C. Create a .env file
• D. Create a Kintone web database app
  • Input Fields
  • Steps to create the Kintone App
• E. Generate an API token for the Kintone app
• H. Edit server.js
  • What do you mean, CORS?
  • Overview
  • server.js setup
  • Let's Start Coding!
• I. Start the servers
  • Terminal 1 - Frontend
  • Terminal 2 - Backend
• Check your work
• Still got a problem?

A. Get started - clone the repo & install dependencies

First, clone the kintone-workshops/React-x-REST-API-Workshop repo! 🚀
Then go inside the folders & install the dependencies!

⚡ Two terminal windows are required for this workshop.

Terminal 1

cd Downloads

git clone https://github.com/kintone-workshops/React-x-REST-API-Workshop

cd React-x-REST-API-Workshop

npm install

Terminal 2

cd Downloads/React-x-REST-API-Workshop

cd backend && npm install

⚠️ WARNING ⚠️

⚡ Node.js v18.16.1 or higher is required to run this workshop.
(The current LTS version is recommended)

Not the correct versions, or confused? 🤔 → Check out the Guide on Installing Node.js & npm {macOS & Windows}.

B. Get your free Kintone database

1. Go to kintone.dev/new/ and fill out the form.
   • ⚡ Only use lowercase, numbers, & hyphens in your subdomain
   • ⚠ Do not use uppercase or special characters
   • 🤖 Example subdomain: example
   • ✅ Use Chrome or Firefox
   • ❌ Do not use Safari
2. Look for "Welcome to Kintone! One More Step for Developer License" email in your inbox and click the Activate Now button.
   • Sent from developer@kintone.com
   • If you don't see it, check your spam folder
3. Set the Initial Password
4. Log into your Kintone Subdomain
   • URL: {your subdomain}.kintone.com (e.g. example.kintone.com)
   • Login Name: Your email address
   • Password: The password you set in Step 3
   • ⚡ If you forget your password, you can reset it by clicking the Having Trouble Logging In? link on the login screen.

C. Create a .env file

Duplicate the .env.example file and save as .env file.
This is where we will be saving the login credentials and API Keys.

Here is what your .env might look like:

SUBDOMAIN = "example"
APPID = "1"
APITOKEN = "1J22qNAR54I4eiMcd0JmfDAavJNfNJDVaqt34X9A"

So far, you can fill out the following variables:

• SUBDOMAIN

⚠️ WARNING ⚠️

⚠️ DO NOT DELETE THE .env.example FILE!
.env.example is used by env-cmd to verify that the .env file is correctly configured.

D. Create a Kintone web database app

Let's create a Kintone App to store Kintone User's Country, State, and City.

Here are the required fields & their configurations for our workshop:

Input Fields

Field Type	Field Name	Field Code
Text Field #1	Country	country
Text Field #2	State	state
Text Field #3	City	city

Steps to create the Kintone App

To create the Kintone App, click the ➕ button on the upper right side of the Kintone Portal.

Click the Create App from Scratch button.

Name your App. We chose I Use Kintone!

Configure your App to have three Text Fields, with field codes for country, state, and city.

Then, click the Save and Activate App buttons! 💪

Confused? 🤔 → Check out the How to Create a Kintone Database App video 📺

E. Generate an API token for the Kintone app

We need to generate an API Token for our Kintone App.

1. From the Kintone App, click the App Settings button ⚙️ on the upper right side.
   • 
2. Select the App Settings tab
3. Under Customization and Integration, click the API Token button.
4. Click Generate.
5. Check the Add records and Edit records boxes.
   • 
6. Copy the API Token and paste it to the APITOKEN variable in your .env file.
7. Click the Save button on the bottom right side of the screen.
8. Click the Update App button on the upper right side of the screen.

Update the .env file with the App ID as well!

Input the App ID into the APPID variable in your .env file.

If this is NOT your first Kintone App, then you need to update the "app" variable with your App ID!

The App ID number can be easily found in the Kintone App's URL!

Go to the Kintone App and grab the URL.

• Example: https://devevents.kintone.com/k/52/

Kintone App's URL follows this template:

• https://<SUBDOMAIN>.kintone.com/k/<App ID>/show#record=<RECORD ID>

So then the https://devevents.kintone.com/k/52/ URL tells us that this App's ID is 52

---

H. Edit server.js

For this workshop, we will only be coding in ./backend/server.js. This tutorial is focused only on connecting a React frontend to a Kintone Web Database. As such, we won't be covering the front end components (located at ./src/App.js).

As is common for Web Development, API calls from the frontend directly to your Kintone Database are not allowed, due to CORS security risks.

What do you mean, CORS?

Since our frontend resides on localhost:3000 and any API calls to our Kintone Database would be directed at your Kintone subdomain, a backend is needed to act as a proxy.

By configuring CORS settings on our Express Server backend, we can make REST API requests to our Kintone Web Database.

Overview

In short, our React Frontend, located on localhost:3000 will make a fetch request of either GET or POST to our Express Server at localhost:50000/getData or localhost:50000/postData. Then, acting as our proxy, our backend will then make a fetch request to https://example.kintone.com/k/v1/record.json?app=1, to either GET or POST our data. The data will be returned our backend as JSON, which we will then pass back to the frontend to be displayed.

server.js setup

Navigate to ./backend/server.js.

At the top of the file, we have our dependency imports and class instantiation:

const express = require('express');
const cors = require('cors');
const PORT = 50000;
const app = express();

Next, we have our authentication setup via our .env file:

require('dotenv').config({path: '../.env'});
const subdomain = process.env.SUBDOMAIN;
const appID = process.env.APPID;
const apiToken = process.env.APITOKEN;

And lastly, we have some CORS configuration:

app.use(cors());
const corsOptions = {
  origin: 'http://localhost:3000'
};

and some pre-configured REST API endpoints:

const multipleRecordsEndpoint = `https://${subdomain}.kintone.com/k/v1/records.json?app=${appID}`
const singleRecordEndpoint = `https://${subdomain}.kintone.com/k/v1/record.json?app=${appID}`;

We got this information from our Kintone Developer Program website, specifically from our REST API Records documentation.

Let's Start Coding!

We've instantiated our Express Server as app, so let's first make a GET request route on localhost:50000/getData.

app.get('/getData', cors(corsOptions), async (req, res) => {
// configure here
});

Express Server routes look and function much like functions. We specify this is a GET request route with app.get(), and then fill in the route name, and its CORS options. Because it is a function, we can designate it as asynchronous easily. One point to note, is how Express Servers designated return values.

You may have noticed that (req, res) specifies a request object (normal), and and response object. (Not exactly normal!) Normally in a function, responses are handled via return statements. This is specific to Express, so be careful.

Thankfully, the rest of routing with Express is simple fetch requests.

app.get('/getData', cors(corsOptions), async (req, res) => {
  const fetchOptions = {
    method: 'GET',
    headers: {
      'X-Cybozu-API-Token': apiToken
    }
  }
  const response = await fetch(multipleRecordsEndpoint, fetchOptions);
  const jsonResponse = await response.json();
});

Like a normal fetch request, we designate some options and our headers with our API Token. Designate a new constant variable response and set it equal to the result of awaiting a fetch request to multipleRecordsEndpoint. This is a GET request, so when we GET our database records, we want to see all records in the database. Therefore, we are fetching from records.json.

Lastly, another Express Server quirk, we designate our JSON response (which gets sent back to our frontend) like so:

// This route executes when a GET request lands on localhost:50000/getData
app.get('/getData', cors(corsOptions), async (req, res) => {
  const fetchOptions = {
    method: 'GET',
    headers: {
      'X-Cybozu-API-Token': apiToken
    }
  }
  const response = await fetch(multipleRecordsEndpoint, fetchOptions);
  const jsonResponse = await response.json();
  res.json(jsonResponse);
});

With this, restart your Express Server, and from your React frontend click the Get! button. If you have any data in your database, it should be displayed on the page. If the loading spinner never stops, check developer options with F12 for errors, and reference the Debugging section.

Last, we'll code out the POST route. It's similar, however we need to correctly structure our POST BODY data, so it can be saved to Kintone properly.

app.post('/postData', cors(corsOptions), async (req, res) => {

});

This time, specify app.post, with an endpoint of /postData. Express Server makes it easy to create different routes.

Next, we'll structure our data to save to Kintone. Looking at our frontend, we can see that the submit button in App.js sends a location object with properties of country, state, and city. For this tutorial, we've handled the frontend so we can focus on the backend.

According to the Kintone REST API documentation our requestBody should be formatted as so:

app.post('/postData', cors(corsOptions), async (req, res) => {
  const requestBody = {
    'app': appID,
    'record': {
      'country': {
        'value': req.body.country
      },
      'state': {
        'value': req.body.state
      },
      'city': {
        'value': req.body.city
      }
    }
  };
});

We then put our requestBody in our options for fetch, and make a request to the singleRecordEndpoint, as we only wish to save one location at a time to our Kintone Database.

app.post('/postData', cors(corsOptions), async (req, res) => {
  const requestBody = {
    'app': appID,
    'record': {
      'country': {
        'value': req.body.country
      },
      'state': {
        'value': req.body.state
      },
      'city': {
        'value': req.body.city
      }
    }
  };
  const options = {
    method: 'POST',
    headers: {
      'X-Cybozu-API-Token': apiToken,
      'Content-Type': 'application/json',
    },
    body: JSON.stringify(requestBody)
  }
  const response = await fetch(singleRecordEndpoint, options);
  const jsonResponse = await response.json();
  res.json(jsonResponse);
});

---

I. Start the servers

Open two terminal windows

Terminal 1 - Frontend

cd React-x-REST-API-Workshop

npm run start

Terminal 2 - Backend

cd React-x-REST-API-Workshop/backend

npm run start

Navigate to localhost:3000 in your browser, enter your Country, State, and City, and click submit!
If your entry appears in your Kintone Database, then congratulations, you did it!

Check your work

Is your code not working?

Compare your backend/server.js with the Solution_server.js to see if it is all written correctly.

Still got a problem?

Check out README's Debugging section!

And finally, post your Kintone customization questions over at our community forum:
forum.kintone.dev

Good luck coding! 💪