Udagram Image Filtering Microservice

Udagram is a simple cloud application developed alongside the Udacity Cloud Engineering Nanodegree. It allows users to register and log into a web client, post photos to the feed, and process photos using an image filtering microservice.

The project is split into three parts:

1. The Simple Frontend A basic Ionic client web application which consumes the RestAPI Backend.
2. The RestAPI Feed Backend, a Node-Express feed microservice.
3. The RestAPI User Backend, a Node-Express user microservice.

Getting Setup

tip: this frontend is designed to work with the RestAPI backends). It is recommended you stand up the backend first, test using Postman, and then the frontend should integrate.

Installing Node and NPM

This project depends on Nodejs and Node Package Manager (NPM). Before continuing, you must download and install Node (NPM is included) from https://nodejs.com/en/download.

Installing Ionic Cli

The Ionic Command Line Interface is required to serve and build the frontend. Instructions for installing the CLI can be found in the Ionic Framework Docs.

Installing project dependencies

This project uses NPM to manage software dependencies. NPM Relies on the package.json file located in the root of this repository. After cloning, open your terminal and run:

npm install

tip: npm i is shorthand for npm install

Setup Backend Node Environment

You'll need to create a new node server. Open a new terminal within the project directory and run:

1. Initialize a new project: npm init
2. Install express: npm i express --save
3. Install typescript dependencies: npm i ts-node-dev tslint typescript @types/bluebird @types/express @types/node --save-dev
4. Look at the package.json file from the RestAPI repo and copy the scripts block into the auto-generated package.json in this project. This will allow you to use shorthand commands like npm run dev

Configure The Backend Endpoint

Ionic uses enviornment files located in ./src/enviornments/enviornment.*.ts to load configuration variables at runtime. By default environment.ts is used for development and enviornment.prod.ts is used for produciton. The apiHost variable should be set to your server url either locally or in the cloud.

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Running the Development Server

Ionic CLI provides an easy to use development server to run and autoreload the frontend. This allows you to make quick changes and see them in real time in your browser. To run the development server, open terminal and run:

ionic serve

Building the Static Frontend Files

Ionic CLI can build the frontend into static HTML/CSS/JavaScript files. These files can be uploaded to a host to be consumed by users on the web. Build artifacts are located in ./www. To build from source, open terminal and run:

ionic build