5hraddha / around-express

Around the U.S. - Back End is a project to create a Node.js server with REST API endpoints to serve all the data requests of the Around the U.S. - Frontend React Project.

Project: Around the U.S. Back End

About the Project

Around the U.S. - Back End is a project to create a Node.js server with REST API endpoints to serve all the data requests of the Around the U.S. - Frontend React Project.

Technologies and Standards Used

The technologies that have been used are:

1. Node.js
2. Express Framework (for development)
3. Postman (for testing API endpoints)
4. EsLint
5. MongoDB

• Node (or more formally Node.js) is an open-source, cross-platform runtime environment that allows developers to create all kinds of server-side tools and applications in JavaScript.
• Node. js is primarily used for non-blocking, event-driven servers, due to its single-threaded nature.
• It's used for traditional web sites and back-end API services.

• Express is the most popular Node web framework, and is the underlying library for a number of other popular Node web frameworks.
• It provides mechanisms to:
  • Write handlers for requests with different HTTP verbs at different URL paths (routes).
  • Integrate with "view" rendering engines in order to generate responses by inserting data into templates.
  • Set common web application settings like the port to use for connecting, and the location of templates that are used for rendering the response.
  • Add additional request processing "middleware" at any point within the request handling pipeline.

• Postman is an API client that makes it easy for developers to create, share, test and document APIs.
• This is done by allowing users to create and save simple and complex HTTP/s requests, as well as read their responses.

• ESLint is an open-source Javascript linting utility used to find problematic patterns or code that doesn’t adhere to certain style guidelines.
• We are using Airbnb JavaScript Style Guide.

• MongoDB is a document database with the scalability and flexibility that the customer wants with the querying and indexing that the customer needs.
• MongoDB stores data in flexible, JSON-like documents.
• The document model maps to the objects in the application code, making data easy to work with.
• MongoDB is a distributed database at its core, so high availability, horizontal scaling, and geographic distribution are built in and easy to use.
• MongoDB is free to use.

Directory Structures

The project has the following directory structure:

Directory	Purpose
/models	Contains all MongoDB schemas and models - all data layers.
/routes	Contains routing files.
/controllers	Contains all the route handler callbacks.
/utils	Contains all the helper methods for general purpose tasks.

REST API Endpoints

HTTP Methods	REST API Endpoint	Purpose
GET	/users	Get JSON list of all the users
GET	/users/:userId	Get a specific user profile with an ID
POST	/users	Create a specific user profile
PATCH	/users/me	Update the current user profile
PATCH	/users/me/avatar	Update the current user avatar
GET	/cards	Get JSON list of all the cards
POST	/cards	Create a new card
DELETE	/cards/:cardId	Delete a card by the given ID
PUT	/cards/:cardId/likes	Update a card by liking it
DELETE	/cards/:cardId/likes	Delete a like on the card

Running the Project

Command	Purpose
npm run start	To launch the server
npm run dev	To launch the server with the hot reload feature