NoSQL: Social Network API

Table of Contents

• Description
• User Story
• Acceptance Criteria
• Video Demo
• Screenshots
• Database Models
• API Routes
• Installation
• Usage
• Contact Me
• My Development Environment
• Languages, Technologies and Packages used

Description

MongoDB is a popular choice for many social networks due to its speed with large amounts of data and flexibility with unstructured data. I have been using several of the technologies that social networking platforms use in their full-stack applications while on my journey to become a full stack developer; And because the foundation of these applications is data, it’s important that i understand how to build and structure the API first.

I was tasked with building an API for a social network web application where users can share their thoughts, react to friends’ thoughts, and create a friend list. For this project i used Express.js for routing, a MongoDB database, and theMongoose ODM.

User Story

AS A social media startup
I WANT an API for my social network that uses a NoSQL database
SO THAT my website can handle large amounts of unstructured data

Acceptance Criteria

GIVEN a social network API
WHEN I enter the command to invoke the application
THEN my server is started and the Mongoose models are synced to the MongoDB database
WHEN I open API GET routes in Insomnia for users and thoughts
THEN the data for each of these routes is displayed in a formatted JSON
WHEN I test API POST, PUT, and DELETE routes in Insomnia
THEN I am able to successfully create, update, and delete users and thoughts in my database
WHEN I test API POST and DELETE routes in Insomnia
THEN I am able to successfully create and delete reactions to thoughts and add and remove friends to a user’s friend list

Video Demo

The following walkthrough videos show initial setup and the POST, PUT, and DELETE routes for Users, Thoughts, Reactions and Friends being tested in Postman:

01 - Start Up - Sourcing schema, seeding database, starting application

02 - GET requests

03 - POST requests

04 - PUT requests

05 - DELETE requests

Screenshots

The following animations show examples of the application's API routes being tested in Postman.

The following animation shows GET routes to return all users:

and Here you can see all thoughts being returned in Postman:

The following animation shows GET routes to return a single user and a single thought being tested in Insomnia:

Database Models and API Routes

The database for this application contains the following four models (click to expand):

Models

-

User:

- `username`

• String

• Unique

• Required

• Trimmed

• email

  • String
  • Required
  • Unique
  • Must match a valid email address (look into Mongoose's matching validation)

• thoughts

  • Array of _id values referencing the Thought model

• friends

  • Array of _id values referencing the User model (self-reference)

Schema Settings:

Created a virtual called friendCount that retrieves the length of the user's friends array field on query.

---

-

Thought:

- `thoughtText`

• String

• Required

• Must be between 1 and 280 characters

• createdAt

  • Date
  • Set default value to the current timestamp
  • Use a getter method to format the timestamp on query

• username (The user that created this thought)

  • String
  • Required

• reactions (These are like replies)

  • Array of nested documents created with the reactionSchema

Schema Settings:

Create a virtual called reactionCount that retrieves the length of the thought's reactions array field on query.

---

-

Reaction (SCHEMA ONLY):

- `reactionId`

• Use Mongoose's ObjectId data type

• Default value is set to a new ObjectId

• reactionBody

  • String
  • Required
  • 280 character maximum

• username

  • String
  • Required

• createdAt

  • Date
  • Set default value to the current timestamp
  • Use a getter method to format the timestamp on query

Schema Settings:

This will not be a model, but rather will be used as the reaction field's subdocument schema in the Thought model.

---

API Routes

/api/users

• GET all users

• GET a single user by its _id and populated thought and friend data

• POST a new user:

// example data
{
	"username": "lernantino",
	"email": "lernantino@gmail.com"
}

• PUT to update a user by its _id

• DELETE to remove user by its _id

---

/api/users/:userId/friends/:friendId

• POST to add a new friend to a user's friend list

• DELETE to remove a friend from a user's friend list

---

/api/thoughts

• GET to get all thoughts

• GET to get a single thought by its _id

• POST to create a new thought (don't forget to push the created thought's _id to the associated user's thoughts array field)

// example data
{
	"thoughtText": "Here's a cool thought...",
	"username": "lernantino",
	"userId": "5edff358a0fcb779aa7b118b"
}

• PUT to update a thought by its _id

• DELETE to remove a thought by its _id

---

/api/thoughts/:thoughtId/reactions

• POST to create a reaction stored in a single thought's reactions array field

• DELETE to pull and remove a reaction by the reaction's reactionId value

Installation

The application will be invoked by entering the following 3 commands line by line into your terminal / CLI

git clone git@github.com:faisal244/social-network-api.git
cd social-network-api
npm install

Usage

Once all the dependancies have been installed, please provide the application with the source database schema by entering the following 2 commands in your terminal:

npm run seed
npm run start

Contact me

• Contact me by Email: m.faisal244@gmail.com

• Connect with me on linkedin

• View my Portfolio

My Development Environment

• VScode
• Terminal
• Nodemon
• MacOS Monterey
• Git
• Github

Languages, Technologies and Packages used

• Javascript

• Node.JS v18.7.0

• [NPM] Mongoose

• [NPM] Express

• [NPM] Dotenv

• [NPM] date-fns

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