Express Pokedex

Working with databases, especially through ORMs, can present quite a learning curve. We'll start by incorporating one database model into an application to save favorite Pokemon.

Backstory: Pokemon

If you're not familiar with Pokemon, Pokemon is a franchise/universe created by Satoshi Tajiri in 1995. It's a famous franchise in both the US and Japan. Fun facts:

• Pokemon is short for "Pocket Monsters"
• The Pokemon universe extends to games, trading cards, and TV
• The Pokemon Company is headquartered in Bellevue, WA.

Getting Started

We'll be using an existing application that uses the PokeAPI, a Pokemon API that allows us to get a list of Pokemon.

• Fork and clone this repository
• Run npm install to install dependencies
  • Use nodemon to start the server

Read the Code

• After setup, STOP. You're using an existing application, so make sure to read the code and ensure what the application does. Some questions you may want to ask yourself:
  • How does the app retrieve a list of Pokemon?
  • How many Pokemon does the API call retrieve? Why that many?
  • What are the routes defined in the application?
  • Think about adding a Pokemon to your favorites.
    • How will this data be submitted?
    • What will you have to do to save this data to a database?
    • What will you have to do to display favorite Pokemon?

User Stories

• As a user, I want to select my favorite Pokemon and add them to a list of favorites.
• As a user, once I add a Pokemon to my list of favorites, I want to be redirected to my favorites page.

Requirements

Part 1: Setup Database

Your first step will be to create a SQL database for your application. Recall the process:

1. Use npm to install the required modules for postgres and sequelize: pg and sequelize
2. Make sure your Postgres server is running (check for the elephant).
3. Run sequelize init to initialize Sequelize.
4. Update your newly created config/config.json file as we did in class. This means changing the credentials, updating the SQL flavor, and changing the database name to pokedex.
5. Run createdb pokedex to create your database inside of Postgres

Part 2: Create your Pokemon Model and Table

Our data model needs only one attribute: name.

1. Use the sequelize model:create command to make the pokemon model. This creates both the model JS and the migration JS files.
2. Use the sequelize db:migrate command to apply the migrations.
3. Confirm that your database and model are inside Postgres using the terminal
4. Create a db-test.js with the following code:

// Make sure to require your models in the files where they will be used.
const db = require('./models');

db.pokemon.create({
    name: 'pikachu'
  }).then(poke => {
    console.log('Created: ', poke.name)
  })

db.pokemon.findOne({
  where: {
    name: 'pikachu'
  }
}).then(poke => {
  console.log('Found: ', poke.name)
})

Test by running the file: node db-test.js.

Part 3: Integrating the database with the app

You'll want to add functionality to the following routes by incorporating the pokemon table you created.

• GET /pokemon
  • View: views/pokemon/index.ejs
  • Purpose: Retrieve all favorited Pokemon and display them on the page
  • What sequelize function will do this for us?
• POST /pokemon
  • The form for adding is already included on the main index page
  • View: none (redirect to /pokemon)
  • Purpose: Creates a new Pokemon and redirects back to /pokemon
  • What is the sequelize function we use here?

Part 4: Display more info on each Pokemon

Add a route GET /pokemon/:name that renders a show page with information about the Pokemon.

• You can get detailed information about a Pokemon by passing the Pokemon's name to PokeAPI. You can retrieve images, abilities, stats, and moves through the API.
• Example: http://pokeapi.co/api/v2/pokemon/bulbasaur/

Check out the result of the pokemon API calls (or see the doc page) for ideas on what data you could show. Show at least 4 pieces of data (e.g. attacks, habitat, etc.)

Part 5: Styling

When finished with the above, style the application more to your liking with CSS.

API Limits

You might notice the API doesn't return all the data it has at once. It has a default limit of 20. That means if it has a list of 150 (or more) Pokemon it will only return 20 at a time, by default.

http://pokeapi.co/api/v2/pokemon/

The API has a way to get around this limit. You can pass a different limit in the query string. The limit allows you to ask the API to return more than it's default amount.

Remember, query strings are parameters passed in the URL after a question mark and separated with ampersands. They look like this:

http://mapwebsite.com/?lat=40.284&long=110.133&zoom=12

This is a URL. It consists of four parts:

1. the protocol is http://
2. the domain is mapwebsite.com
3. the path is / (the root path)
4. the query string is ?lat=40.284&long=110.133

The query string is like a JavaScript object. There's keys and values. This query string has three keys and values:

Key	Value
lat	40.284
long	110.133
zoom	12

The Pokemon API is configured to read all sorts of keys and values from the query string. Perhaps the most useful one we'll use is limit. Specifying smaller or larger limits tells the server to send back more or less data.

Specify a limit of just one to see the first item in the list: <http://pokeapi.co/api/v2/pokemon?limit=1>

Or, specify a limit of 151 to see all 151 pokemon! <http://pokeapi.co/api/v2/pokemon?limit=151>

Bonuses

• Add the ability to DELETE Pokemon from the favorites list.
• Rethink the pokemon table. Instead of it being a list of favorites, have it be a list of pokemon the user owns. What columns should the table have? nickname, level, etc... How would this change the app?

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Licensing

1. All content is licensed under a CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0 license.
2. All software code is licensed under GNU GPLv3. For commercial use or alternative licensing, please contact legal@ga.co.