/Sprint-Challenge-Node-Express

Primary LanguageJavaScript

Sprint Challenge: Express and Node.js - Projects & Actions

This challenge allows you to practice the concepts and techniques learned over the past Sprint and apply them in a concrete project. This Sprint explored Building RESTful Web APIs with Express and Node.js, Server-side Routing, Express Middleware & Deployment and Good Practices. In your challenge for this Sprint, you will demonstrate proficiency by creating an Web API using Node.js and Express.

Instructions

Read these instructions carefully. Understand exactly what is expected before starting this Sprint Challenge.

This is an individual assessment. All work must be your own. Your challenge score is a measure of your ability to work independently using the material covered through this sprint. You need to demonstrate proficiency in the concepts and objectives introduced and practiced in preceding days.

You are not allowed to collaborate during the Sprint Challenge. However, you are encouraged to follow the twenty-minute rule and seek support from your PM and Instructor in your cohort help channel on Slack. Your work reflects your proficiency Building RESTful APIs with Node.js and Express; and your command of the concepts and techniques taught during the Express and Node.js, Server-side Routing, Express Middleware & Deployment and Good Practices modules.

You have three hours to complete this challenge. Plan your time accordingly.

Commits

Commit your code regularly and meaningfully. This helps both you (in case you ever need to return to old code for any number of reasons and your project manager).

Description

In this challenge, create a web API around the following resources: Projects and Actions.

Self-Study/Essay Questions

Demonstrate your understanding of this Sprint's concepts by answering the following free-form questions. Edit this document to include your answers after each question. Make sure to leave a blank line above and below your answer so it is clear and easy to read by your project manager.

  • Mention two parts of Express that you learned about this week.

  • Describe Middleware?

  • Describe a Resource?

  • What can the API return to help clients know if a request was successful?

  • How can we partition our application into sub-applications?

Project Setup

Follow these steps to set up and work on your project:

  • Create a forked copy of this project.
  • Add PM as collaborator on Github.
  • Clone your OWN version of Repo (Not Lambda's by mistake!).
  • Create a new Branch on the clone: git checkout -b <firstName-lastName>.
  • Implement the project on this Branch, committing changes regularly.
  • Push commits: git push origin <firstName-lastName>.

Follow these steps for completing your project.

  • Submit a Pull-Request to merge Branch into master (student's Repo). Please don't merge your own pull request.
  • Add your Project Manager as a Reviewer on the Pull-request
  • PM then will count the HW as done by merging the branch back into master.

Database Persistence Helpers

So that you have a thorough understanding of what the limitations of your Database and Data Models are, please read the following before implemnting the Minimum Viable Product:

The /data/helpers folder includes helper files that you can use to manage the persistence of project and action data. These files are projectModel.js and actionModel.js. Both files publish the following api, which you can use to store, modify and retrieve each resource:

  • get(): calling get returns an array of all the resources contained in the database. If you pass an id to this method it will return the resource with that id if one is found.
  • insert(): calling insert passing it a resource object will add it to the database and return the newly created resource.
  • update(): accepts two arguments, the first is the id of the resource to update, and the second is an object with the changes to apply. It returns the updated resource. If a resource with the provided id is not found, the method returns null.
  • remove(): the remove method accepts an id as it's first parameter and, upon successfully deleting the resource from the database, returns the number of records deleted.

The projectModel.js helper includes an extra method called getProjectActions() that takes a project id as it's only argument and returns a list of all the actions for the project.

All these helper methods return a promise. Use Postman to test the API as you work through the exercises.

Minimum Viable Product

  • Take the steps necessary to create a package.json to keep a record of all dependencies.
  • Use yarn to add knex and sqlite3 as dependencies to the project. This is required for database access.
  • Configure an npm script named "start" that will execute your code using nodemon so that the server restarts on changes. Make nodemon be a development time dependency only, it shouldn't be deployed to production.

Design and build the necessary endpoints to:

  • Perform CRUD operations on projects and actions.
  • Retrieve the list of actions for a project.

Database Schemas

The schemas (properties and data type of each property) used to store and retrieve the resources inside the included database (lambda.sqlite3) is described below.

Projects

  • id: number, no need to provide it when creating projects, the database will generate it.
  • name: string, up to 128 characters long, required.
  • description: string, no size limit, required.
  • completed: boolean to indicate if the project has been completed, not required

Actions

  • id: number, no need to provide it when creating posts, the database will automatically generate it.
  • project_id: number, required, must be the id of an existing project.
  • description: string, up to 128 characters long, required.
  • notes: string, no size limit, required. Used to record additional notes or requirements to complete the action.
  • completed: boolean to indicate if the action has been completed, not required

We have provided test data for all the resources.

Now that we have a way to add, update, remove and retrieve data from the provided database, it's time to work on the API.

Stretch Goal

  • Use create-react-app to create an application in a separate folder (outside the API project folder). Name it anything you want.
  • From the React application show a list of all projects using the API you built.
  • Add functionality to show the details of a project, including its actions, when clicking a project name in the list. Use React Router to navigate to a separate route to show the project details.
  • Add styling! Perhaps with styled-components.