dart_news_api

This repository contains a simple Dart backend that interacts with a public news API for fetching articles.

Project structure

/news_server
    - /lib: Server code not related to routing (e.g. repository, models, utilities)
    - /openapi: openapi spec and generated documentation in Markdown format.
    - /packages: Dart packages that have functionality external to the server (e.g. GNews API client)
    - /routes: Controllers and middleware for API routing.
    - /tests: All tests for the server.

API limit

This app uses the free tier of the GNews API with a daily quota of 100 calls. Basic caching of calls to the GNews API is implemented.

As well, the free tier of the GNews API only returns a small part of the beginning of the article instead of the full article content.

API features

Fetch top news articles (can filter fetch count up to 10)
Search for news articles by keyword
- Can additionally filter keyword searches by country
Articles have a metadata object which currently includes word frequency and character count.

API documentation

The API is documented with a YAML openapi spec. Generated markdown docs can be found here.

Running the project

Install the Dart SDK on your machine.

A Dart version of >=2.17.0 <3.0.0 is required.

dart --version
Dart SDK version: 2.18.2 (stable) (Tue Sep 27 13:24:11 2022 +0200) on "macos_x64"

This project uses the dart_frog server framework. To install:

dart pub global activate dart_frog_cli

An API key for GNews is required to fetch articles. Once an API key is acquired, create a .env file in the root folder of this app:

cd /path/to/dart_news_api

.env:

GNEWS_API_KEY={your_api_key_here}

To run the server (specifying port is optional and will default to 8080):

cd /path/to/dart_news_api
dart pub get
dart_frog dev --port 8080
✓ Running on http://localhost:8080 (3.4s)
The Dart VM service is listening on http://127.0.0.1:8181/1U6MVRzgf6I=/
The Dart DevTools debugger and profiler is available at: http://127.0.0.1:8181/1U6MVRzgf6I=/devtools/#/?uri=ws%3A%2F%2F127.0.0.1%3A8181%2F1U6MVRzgf6I%3D%2Fws
[hotreload] Hot reload is enabled.

Hot reload is enabled on the dev server. Modifying and saving a file while the server is running will reload the app with the changes.

Running tests

NOTE: Code is not 100% covered, but has basic tests. The tests implemented show how further coverage can be added, both in the dart_frog specific routing code and in the plain Dart code.

cd /path/to/dart_news_api
dart pub get
dart test

Creating a production build

# Ensure you have Dart and the dart_frog_cli package installed
cd /path/to/dart_news_api
dart pub get
dart_frog build

A Dockerfile will be generated in the build folder. To more info on deploying the server, see the dart_frog documentation.

Regenerating server models

This app uses freezed and build_runner to generate models and json converters. To regenerate the models:

dart run build_runner build --delete-conflicting-outputs

Regenerating openapi documentation

Install the openapi-generator-cli and run the following:

cd /path/to/dart_news_api
openapi-generator-cli generate -i openapi.yaml -o ./generated -g markdown

shaynekellyii/dart_news_api