Inventory Manager - Shopify Backend Challenge - Summer 2022

Deployment

You can view and access the frontend of this site at: https://shopifybackendsummer2022.herokuapp.com/

Note: Please have a look at the Notes and Caveats section at the end to see the limitations in testing the features/functionalities entirely through the frontend :)

Task and Goal of this challenge
Features and functionalities completed
Additional feature implemented
Tools and Technologies used
Setting up the Development environment
Testing the features/functionalities
Notes and Caveats

Task and Goal of this Challenge

The goal of the challenge was to create a backend application solely for keeping track of a company's inventory. The user has to be able to perform basic CRUD operations, which are:

Create inventory items
Edit Them
Delete Them
View a list of them

An additional feature was also needed to be implemented, which is discussed in the next section

Features and functionalities completed

This application has a fully functioning backend which is able to do all the required basic CRUD operations
I have implemented a simple plain-vanilla front-end which the user can interact with to test/try out the Create, Read, and Delete functionalities. Though the update feature is not present on the front-end to view/test, IT IS FULLY FUNCTIONING ON THE BACKEND, which is the requirement

Additional feature

The additional feature I chose to implement is the Push a button export product data to a CSV feature, which allows the user to export all the data/items currently in the inventory/database into a CSV file. This can be tried/tested either through clicking a link on the frontend, which automatically downloads the CSV file for the user

Tools and Technologies Used

Node, Express, Javascript, MongoDB (Backend)
React (Frontend)
Heroku (Deployment)
Postman(Testing API endpoints)
Windows Terminal :)

Setting up the Local Development Environment

First, you need to install npm (Node package manager) and Node.js. Check if they are already installed by running:

$ node -v
$ npm -v

If Node.js is not installed, navigate to this website: https://nodejs.dev/learn/how-to-install-nodejs for installation instructions. Note that if you are using Mac OS and have homebrew installed as a package manager you can simply install Node.js by doing:

$ brew install node

Installing Node.js automatically installs npm so you don't need to worry about installing it separately!

Now, to actually build the project first start by cloning the repo and navigate to the top-level directory:

$ git clone git@github.com:tapasrastogi2411/Shopify-Backend-Challenge-Summer-2022.git
$ cd Shopify-Backend-Challenge-Summer-2022/

NOTE: At this point, we are reading to start our frontend and backend - But first we need to setup our MongoDB database. This requires a few extra steps, so please take note of the following points

You HAVE to create a .env file inside the backend folder of your cloned repository. Create a new file in this folder and simply name it .env, with the following content:

MONGO_URI="<mongo_URL>

where <mongo_uri> is your MongoDB Connection URL

To run the front-end do:

$ cd frontend
$ npm install
$ npm start

To run the back-end do:

$ cd backend
$ npm run devStart

You can now see the frontend running on http://localhost:3000/

Testing the features/functionalities

You have two ways of testing the backend endpoints(CRUD)and the exportCSV feature - through the local website(or deployed website) OR through Postman(recommended)
Testing Create, Read, Delete and the exportCSV feature is recommended to be done through the frontend
Testing the update feature is recommended to be done through Postman, since it is the only feature which isnt available on the frontend(BUT WORKS perfectly on the backend)
Click the Export(CSV) button on the frontend to test out the exportCSV feature! :)

Notes and Caveats

Update feature isnt implemented on the Frontend, BUT WORKS perfectly fine on the BACKEND, which is what matters
To view the action of any operation on my frontend, you need to refresh the page

If you have reached this part, you are awesome and thank you for taking the time to go through my project :)

tapasrastogi2411/Shopify-Backend-Challenge-Summer-2022