jjuli93 / meli-challenge-api

First steps

Installing node

Get the latest version of node from the official website or using nvm Nvm approach is preferred.

Install dependencies

Run npm install or yarn from rootpath of the project.

Database configuration (for this proyect this is optional)

Before running the app, make sure you have postgresql installed and a db created, to create it run the following steps inside a psql terminal:

1. CREATE DATABASE db_project_name;
2. \c db_project_name;
3. CREATE ROLE "project_name" LOGIN CREATEDB PASSWORD 'project_name';

Then, set in .env file following variables:

DB_HOST="localhost"
DB_PORT=5432
DB_USERNAME="project_name"
DB_PASSWORD="project_name"
DB_NAME="db_project_name"
DB_NAME_DEV="db_project_name_dev"
DB_NAME_TEST="db_project_name_test"

Migrations

To create a migration from changes in models, run npm run migrations-generate <migration_name> Migrations should be generated after each change you made to your models.

To create a migration manually, run npm run migrations-create <migration_name>.

To run migrations, execute npm run migrations.

Starting your app

Now, to start your app run npm start in the rootpath of the project. Then access your app at localhost:port, where the port was logged into the console at startup.

Development

Environments

By default, the environment will be development, but you can change it easily using the NODE_ENV environmental variable.

Environment variables

Dotenv is used for managing environment variables. They are stored in the /.env file. Take into account that the variables defined in the bashrc are not overrided.

The environment variables should be added to the .env file in the form of NAME=VALUE, as the following example:

DB_USERNAME="root"
DB_PASS="superpass"
DB_PASSWORD="superpass"
PORT=8081
CLIENTS_API="http://api.clients.example.org/"

Remember not to push nor commit the .env file.

Logging

To log useful information of your program to the console you just need to import the logger located at app/logger. There are two possible types of logging: info and error. You should use them depending on the type of message you want to show.

Here is an example snippet:

const logger = require('/app/logger');

if (error) { 
    logger.error('There is an error');
} else {
    logger.info('There is no error');
}

Debugging

In order to debug our Node.js application, we enable 'sourceMap' in tsconfig.json, this compiler option generates corresponding .map files from original Javascipt counterpart. This change is mandatory to attach a debugger, otherwise it wouldn't be able to match transpiled files with their originals.

In VSCode, you will need to add an ./.vscode/launch.json file in order to launch the debugger. You can use the following:

{
  // Use IntelliSense to learn about possible attributes.
  // Hover to view descriptions of existing attributes.
  // For more information, visit: https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?linkid=830387
  "version": "0.2.0",
  "configurations": [
    {
      "type": "node",
      "request": "launch",
      "name": "Launch Program",
      "program": "${workspaceFolder}/server.ts",
      "preLaunchTask": "tsc: build - tsconfig.json",
      "restart": true,
      "outFiles": [
        "${workspaceFolder}/dist/**/*.js"
      ]
    }
  ]
}