Full-Stack React Projects - Second Edition

The categories API

To allow users to select a specific category to search in, we will first set up an API that retrieves all the distinct categories present in the Products collection in the database. A GET request to /api/products/categories will return an array of unique categories, and this route is declared as shown here:

mern-marketplace/server/routes/product.routes.js:

router.route('/api/products/categories')      .get(productCtrl.listCategories)

The listCategories controller method queries the Products collection with a distinct call against the category field, as shown in the following code:

mern-marketplace/server/controllers/product.controller.js:

const listCategories = async (req, res) => {  try { let products = await Product.distinct('category',{}) ...