Full Stack Open – Exercises

This repository contains my solutions and progress for the Full Stack Open course by the University of Helsinki.

Course progress

• Part 0–2: React fundamentals, component state, forms, and data fetching
• Part 3: Backend with Node.js, Express, MongoDB, and deployment
• Part 4: Backend testing, user authentication, and authorization
• Part 5: Frontend testing, login/token handling, and end-to-end testing
• Part 6: State management with Context API, Zustand, and React Query
• Part 7: In Progress...

Technologies & Concepts

Frontend

• React (components, state, props, forms, conditional rendering)
• Axios (HTTP client)
• React Router (client-side routing, useMatch, useNavigate)
• MUI (Material UI) & Emotion (component library and styling)

State Management

• Context API & useState (shared state without prop drilling)
• Zustand (lightweight global state store)
• TanStack React Query (server-state caching, mutations, and query invalidation)
• json-server (mock REST backend for local development)

Backend

• Node.js
• Express.js (REST API, routing, middleware)
• MongoDB & Mongoose (schemas, models, validation)
• Schema relations with ref and .populate() (e.g. User ↔ Note references)
• dotenv (environment variables)
• CORS (cross-origin resource sharing)

Authentication & Security

• JSON Web Tokens (JWT)
• Password hashing with bcrypt
• Token-based authorization for protected routes
• Middleware-based authentication handling
• Client-side token persistence with localStorage and attaching tokens to requests

Testing

• Supertest (HTTP integration testing)
• Automated backend tests
  • HTTP requests with Supertest
  • API endpoints
  • Authentication and authorization
  • Database state changes
• Frontend unit/integration testing
  • Vitest & React Testing Library
  • jsdom (simulated browser environment)
  • user-event (simulating user interactions)
  • Test coverage reporting with @vitest/coverage-v8
• End-to-end testing
  • Playwright
  • Testing full user flows against a running app (login, CRUD, notifications)

HTTP & API

• REST principles (GET, POST, PUT, DELETE)
• CRUD operations
• HTTP status codes
• Error handling with middleware

Tooling & Other Concepts

• Web application fundamentals (HTTP request/response cycle, traditional web apps vs. single-page apps)
• cross-env (cross-platform environment variable support)
• ESLint (code linting)
• Git & GitHub (version control)
• npm (package management)
• Postman & REST Client (manual API testing)
• Deployment with Render

Notes

This repository is updated continuously as I progress through the course.