Repeating code for same operation of different datatypes, Express(nodejs) app with mongoose

Question

I am creating an Express rest API that connects to a MongoDB with mongoose. The database has several different datatypes: User, Book, Food and so on. As I am writing endpoints and function for these datatypes. I realized that I am repeating a lot of the same code, for example, for the code below:

// Book.js
import Book from './models/Book'

function deleteById (req, res, next) {
  Book.findByIdAndRemove(req.params.id, function (err) {
    if (err) {
      let error = new Error('Failed to delete an book in database')
      error.statusCode = 500
      return next(error)
    }
    res.json({
      success: true,
      message: 'Book deleted successfully'
    })
  })
}

I can just change Book to User or Food and the same code can be used. Which results in a lot of repeating code that looks like this:

// Food.js
import Food from './models/Food'

function deleteById (req, res, next) {
  Food.findByIdAndRemove(req.params.id, function (err) {
    if (err) {
      let error = new Error('Failed to delete an food in database')
      error.statusCode = 500
      return next(error)
    }
    res.json({
      success: true,
      message: 'Food deleted successfully'
    })
  })
}

So I was wondering if there is a way to generate the functions so that I don't need to repeat the code for the deleteById function for each type of data. What would be the best practice? Or is it a bad practice to try to generate the functions and repeating is necessary?

Any help would be really appreciated, thanks in advance.

Answer 1

After a lot of research, I found the best way to be using a class constructor and pass in datatype as a variable:

class BaseController {
  constructor (type, name) {
    if (!type || !access) {
      throw new Error('Must define datatype')
    }
    this.datatype = type
    this.name = name
    this.deleteById = this.deleteById.bind(this)
  }

  deleteById (req, res, next) {
    let name = this.name
    this.datatype.findByIdAndRemove(id, function (err) {
      if (err) {
        let error = new Error(`Failed to delete ${name} in database`)
        error.statusCode = 500
        return next(error)
      }

      res.json({
        success: true,
        message: `${name} deleted successfully`
      })
    })
  }
}

And in the router file, we can just call

const food = new BaseController(Food, 'Food')
router.get('/food/delete/:id', food.deleteById)