About

This is a sample API designed to showcase the concepts of test-driven development.

All code was written during a 45 minute talk at SWHacks 2017.

The talk was targeted to users who had a moderate understanding of object oriented programming, but no experience with web APIs, web frameworks, test driven development, or even HTTP requests.

Usage

1. npm install mocha -g // intalls mocha globally
2. npm install // installs all dependencies
3. node index.js //starts the server

Testing

All tests are stored in the /tests directory. The tests in todo-test.js are complete, but there is only a single (basically useless) test in routes-test.js. I encourage you to try writing tests for the routes as a way to become more familiar with testing.

The tests can be run using npm test, which is an alias created in our package.json file for mocha tests. In a "real" API, your test command would likely be much longer, which is where npm test would introduce some nice time savings.

API

This is an API to create an extremely simple todo list. It has the following methods:

Get All Todos

• URL

  /

• Method

  GET

• Data Params (x-www-form-urlencoded)

  None

• Example Request

curl -X GET -H "Cache-Control: no-cache" "http://localhost:3000/"

Create a Todo

• URL

  /create

• Method

  POST

• Data Params (x-www-form-urlencoded)

  text : a string containing the text of your todo.

• Example Request

curl -X POST -H "Content-Type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded" -H "Cache-Control: no-cache" -d 'text=Get Milk' "http://localhost:3000/create"

Update a Todo

• URL

  /update

• Method

  PUT

• Data Params (x-www-form-urlencoded)

  id : The ID of the todo you want to update.

  text : a string containing the updated text of the todo.

• Example Request

curl -X PUT -H "Content-Type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded" -H "Cache-Control: no-cache" -d 'id=0&text=Get 2% Milk' "http://localhost:3000/update"

Delete a Todo

• URL

  /delete

• Method

  DELETE

• Data Params (x-www-form-urlencoded)

  id : The ID of the todo you want to delete.

• Example Request

curl -X DELETE -H "Content-Type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded" -H "Cache-Control: no-cache" -d 'id=0' "http://localhost:3000/delete"

Build Your Own API

This was designed to show you what a super basic API looks like. Hopefully it inspired you to want to make your own. Here are some resources to get you started:

• Postman - Send HTTP requests easily and auto-generate API docs.
• HTTP Status Codes - A list of standard HTTP Status Codes you can send from your API.
• What is REST? - A StackOverflow thread with links to a bunch of information to get you aquainted with REST.