Social Wall

This is a small web application built for beginners that highlights essential web programming topics such as:

The HTTP request response life cycle
Node's Express web application framework
Fundamental patterns in computer programming (loops, branching, variables)
Data persistence using a SQL database
HTML templating using Handlebars
Deploying an application using Heroku

Getting Started
Installing PostgreSQL
- Mac
- Windows
Interacting With The Database
Iterations
Deploying To Heroku

Getting Started

Note: This project requires you to install PostgreSQL. See Installing PostgreSQL for instructions.

Fork this repository
Clone your fork
Run npm install inside the project directory
Get started on the Iterations

npm run db:create will create local databases for development and testing.

Installing PostgreSQL

Mac

You can install PostgreSQL on a Mac with brew:

brew install postgresql

Once installed, start the database server with

brew services start postgresql

Windows

You can install PostgreSQL on Windows using Chocolatey's choco command:

choco install postgresql

See the Chocolatey PostgreSQL package page for more details.

Once installed, you have to add PostgreSQL's bin directory to your PATH environment variable. Search for Edit system environment variable to open System Properties. From there, click the Environment Variables button.

Under User variables, click the row labeled Path and then click the Edit... button. Click New and add the following directory to the PATH environment variable:

C:\Program Files\PostgreSQL\12\bin

Interacting With The Database

We are using two libraries two interact with the database:

Knex.js, which is used to generate SQL queries and interact with PostgreSQL
Objection.js, which allows us to interact with the database using JavaScript objects (rather than writing SQL queries). Under the hood, it uses Knex to talk to the database.

Iterations

[v0.1] Start The Core App

To create the local development database, run the following command inside the project directory:

npm run db:create

If this fails it means your PostgreSQL installation is broken. Find an instructor and get help! If PostgreSQL isn't set up correctly, nothing will work.

Next, run the following command to create the initial tables:

npx knex migrate:latest

Finally, run the following to start the server:

npm start

Visit http://localhost:3000 to see the app!

[v0.2] Deploy App To Heroku

See Deploying To Heroku below for instructions on how to make the application available to the public. You can skip this step for now, if you want.

[v1.0] Posting Messages

✔️ A guest may create a message
✔️ A guest may see a list of all messages

[v1.1] Liking Messages

A guest may 'like' a message
A guest may see the number of likes on a message

[v1.2] Message Mood

A guest may assign a 'mood' to a message, i.e., 'happy', 'sad', 'fun'
A guest may see the mood assigned to a message

[v1.3] Design improvements

Use some html and css to make this site look a little better
Think of 1-2 UX improvements and make them

[v2.0] User Authentication

Users can log in
A message becomes associated ('owned') when it is created by a logged in User

[v2.1] Deleting And Updating Messages

An author may destroy a message they own
An author may update a message they own
Every author has a page displaying their messages

Deploying To Heroku

Heroku is a service that allows us to host our application and make it available to the whole world. Every time we have a new version of our application, we push it to Heroku (a process called deploying).

One nice feature of Heroku is that we use git to publish new versions of your application.

Before anything else, do the following:

Create an account on Heroku
Download and install the Heroku command line tool
Once the heroku command is available, log into your Heroku account with the following command:
```
heroku login
```
Inside the project directory, run the following command to create a new Heroku application (replace some-example-app with a unique name for your application):
```
heroku create some-example-app
```
Add PostgreSQL to your Heroku instance with the following command:
```
heroku addons:create heroku-postgresql:hobby-dev
```

You're now ready to deploy to Heroku using git:

git push heroku master

Once git push has finished, run the following command to ensure the database is up to date:

heroku run npx knex migrate:latest

Finally, run

heroku domains

to see the domain for your application. Open it up in your browser of choice!

jaelynztaylor/project-js-social-wall