Blog List Application

A blog list RESTful web service utilizing Node.js & MongoDB to save information about interesting blogs users have stumbled across on the internet, featuring JSON Web Token for user authentication.

This is part of the full stack course by University of Helsinki

Table of Contents

• Blog List Application
  • Table of Contents
  • Overview
    • Features
    • Links
  • Getting started
    • Installation
    • Project structure
    • Deployment
    • Running Tests
  • Authors

Overview

Features

• Implemented & Deployed a RESTful HTTP APIs with MongoDB Atlas as a database service.
• Structured project directory: Separate different responsibilities of the application into separate modules, make developing the application much easier.
• Conducted integration testing: Test the entire application through its REST API, included the database.
• Token authentication: Server generates a token to identify the logged-in user. bcrypt is used to hash the user's password.

Links

• View code solution: https://github.com/minhlong149/bloglist
• Live API preview: https://longdm-bloglist.cyclic.app

Getting started

Installation

Clone this repo, then install the npm packages. Node.js must be installed.

git clone https://github.com/minhlong149/bloglist
cd bloglist
npm install

To run this project, you will need to add the following environment variables to your .env file: PORT, MONGODB_URI, TEST_MONGODB_URI, SECRET_SIGNATURE

Project structure

├── index.js
├── app.js
├── controllers
│   └── blogs.js
│   └── ...
├── models
│   └── blog.js
│   └── ...
├── package-lock.json
├── package.json
├── utils
│   ├── config.js
│   ├── logger.js
│   └── middleware.js

• The index.js file only imports the actual application from the app.js file and then starts the application.
• The responsibility of establishing the connection to the database is given to the app.js module. Files under the models directory defines the Mongoose schemas.
• All printing to the console are separated to its own module utils/logger.js.
• The handling of environment variables is extracted into a separate utils/config.js file
• Custom middlewares are moved to utils/middleware.js module

Deployment

• Run npm start and open the application in the browser by visiting the address http://localhost:3001

• Start the server in development mode with nodemon via the command npm run dev. Changes to the application code will cause the server to restart automatically.

If port 3001 is already in use by some other application, either shut down the application using port 3001, or use a different port for this application.

Running Tests

THE TESTS HAS BEEN BROKE DOWN AFTER ADDING TOKEN-BASED AUTHENTICATION

The entire application is tested through its REST API, included the database. Modes are also separated for testing via the NODE_ENV environment variable.

To executes all of the tests for the application, run the following command:

npm run test

You can also specify the tests that need to be run as parameters of the npm test command.

Most Windows command prompts will choke when you set environment variables with NODE_ENV=test. We can correct this by installing the cross-env package as a development dependency and use it in our npm scripts defined in package.json. If you are deploying this application to Fly.io/Render, save cross-env to a production dependency.

cross-env NODE_ENV=test jest --verbose --runInBand --detectOpenHandles

Authors

• @minhlong149