DE | Axios CRUD Exercise

Learning Goals

After this learning unit, you will be able to:

Create a complete SPA (Single Page Application)
Create, Read, Update, and Delete data from a API
Use Axios to connect with an external API

Introduction

In this lesson, we will use all what we have learnt about APIs and how to connect an application to them through Axios.

We will first create a fake API using JSON-Server to then do an application to Create, Read, Update, and Delete characters from it. The routes available in this API are the following:

Verb: GET, Route: "/characters"
- It receives NO parameters
- It returns the full characters list
- It returns JSON
Verb: GET, Route: "/characters/:id"
- It receives the character ID as a parameter (route)
- It returns the character with the indicated id
- It returns JSON
Verb: POST, Route: "/characters"
- It receives an object as a parameter, with the following format: { name: string, occupation: string, cartoon: boolean, weapon: string }
- It returns the created character if there are no errors
- It returns the wrong fields if there is some error
- It returns JSON
Verb: PATCH/PUT, Route: "/characters/:id"
- It receives the character id as a parameter (route)
- It receives an object as a parameter, with the following format: { name: string, occupation: string, cartoon: boolean, weapon: string }
- All the fields are optionals
- It returns the updated character if there are no errors
- It returns "Character not found" if there is no character with the indicated id
- It returns JSON / text
Verb: DELETE, Route: "/characters/:id"
- It receives the character id as a parameter (route)
- It returns "Character has been successfully deleted" if there are no errors
- It returns "Character not found" if there is no character with the indicated id
- It returns text

Requirements

Fork this repo
Clone this repo into your ~/code/labs

Submission

Upon completion, run the following commands:

$ git add .
$ git commit -m "done"
$ git push origin master

Navigate to your repo and create a Pull Request -from your master branch to the original repository master branch.

In the Pull request indicate your campus, name, and last name separated by a dash "-".

Deliverables

In your starter code folder you will find every file you need to finish the game. Push every needed file to make your game work properly.

Exercise

Iteration 1: The Fake API

In the api folder, you need to create a db.json file. Inside our db.json we will specify the first 2 characters of our API, so we can start working with some data. Copy/paste the following characters in the file:

{
  "characters": [
    {
      "id": 1,
      "name": "Han Solo",
      "occupation": "Smuggler",
      "weapon": "Blaster Pistol",
      "cartoon": true
    },
    {
      "id": 2,
      "name": "Luke Skywalker",
      "occupation": "Jedi Knight",
      "weapon": "Lightsaber",
      "cartoon": false
    },
    {
      "id": 3,
      "name": "SpongeBob",
      "occupation": "Live under the sea",
      "weapon": "Crabby Patty",
      "cartoon": true
    }
  ]
}

Then run the following code on the terminal to make our API start working:

$ json-server --watch db.json --port 8000

Iteration 2: The `APIHandler.js` file

We have our API running, so now we will construct a class APIHandler to deal with the Axios calls. The only responsability of this class is to display the JSON result that comes from the API, or give the needed information to the API via a function argument.

The funcionalities of the APIHandler class are:

Get all the characters info from http://localhost:8000/characters
Get a single character info from http://localhost:8000/characters/:id
Create a single character posting the data to http://localhost:8000/characters
Delete a single character through his id in http://localhost:8000/characters/:id
Edit a single character through his id in http://localhost:8000/characters/:id

You have to create an Axios call for each of these actions. You can create as many functions as you need inside the class, but remember this class should only manage the API request and display the resulting value.

Micro-advice

To make sure everything is working, use POSTMAN. Remember the routes available and the parameters needed, both in the route and through params.

In this iteration, it's enough to show results in the console.

Iteration 3: The `index.js` file

Once we have the results served by the API in the application, we will create the events that will handle with the CRUD operations.

Fetch all characters

Retrieve all the available characters in the API and show them in the application. In order to do that, we need to:

Create a button (Fetch all in the image above) that calls a function in the APIHandler.
The function will return a JSON object with all the characters.
Get the data and show the characters. Finally, with javascript, we will create a structure similar to a card (image above) to show every detail of each character.

Fetch one character

Following the same idea as with fetching all, retreive a single character's data we need to:

Create a button (Fetch one in the image above) to, through an input field, get the id of an existing character.
Search that character in the API with http://localhost:8000/characters/:id
Get the data and show the character info as a card.

Delete one character

To be able to delete a character from the API database, we need to:

Create a button (Delete one in the image above) to get the id of the character we want to delete.
Delete that character in the API with http://localhost:8000/characters/:id Remember which HTTP verb you need in the request!!
If the character is succesfully removed, change the background color of the button to green.
If something went wrong, change the background color of the button to red.

Create new character

We will create a form with 4 inputs, one for each character field: name(text), occupation(text), weapon(text) and cartoon(checkbox).

Create a button (Create in the image above) to get all the data from the form.
Send the data to the APIHandler function to save the new character through http://localhost:8000/characters Remember which HTTP verb you need in the request!!
If the character was succesfully created, set the background color of the button to green.
If something went wrong, change the background color of the button to red.

Edit a character

We will create a form with 4 inputs, one for each field of the characters: name(text), occupation(text), weapon(text) and cartoon(checkbox). Also, we will create a new input to indicate the id of the character we want to edit.

Create a button (Update in the image above) to get all the data from the form.
Send the data to the APIHandler function to save the new character through http://localhost:8000/characters/:id Remember which HTTP verb you need in the request!!
If the character was succesfully updated, set the background color of the button to green.
If something went wrong, change the background color of the button to red.

That's all what we need to do!

/Happy coding

elisamerino/lab-ajax-crud-characters