Back End: Olly's NC News

Summary

This is a back end project that stores the data of elements of a news site, including articles, topics, comments and users, and provides this information on a set of endpoints by using express and PostgreSQL.

Live Demo

A live demo can be found here.

A list of potential endpoints to try are:

REST	Endpoint	Description	Queries
GET	/api	Returns all available endpoints	None
GET	/api/topics	Returns all available topics	None
GET	/api/topics/:slug	Returns a topic by its slug	None
GET	/api/users	Returns all users	None
GET	/api/users/:username	Returns a user by their username	None
GET POST	/api/articles	Returns all articles	topic : string order : asc/desc sort_by : string
GET PATCH	/api/articles/:article_id	Returns a selected article by ID	None
GET POST	/api/articles/:article_id/comments	Returns all comments for an article	None
DELETE	/api/comments/:comment_id	Deletes a selected comment by ID	None

Setup

You will need VS Code or any other supported JS IDE for this project.

Cloning and Packages

You may clone this repo using:

git clone https://github.com/ollycrossley/be-news.git
cd be-news

# If you are on VS Code you can use in the terminal
code .

Once cloned and opened, install all the packages by running npm install.

PSQL Setup (skip if you already have PSQL installed)

This project runs on PSQL so make sure you have that setup.

You may follow the online guides for setting this up, but I will provide the steps I took below to installing it.

For Mac users

Download, install and open the PSQL app. Then type psql in your terminal and it should be good to go.

Potential fixes for the psql app not running can be fixed with some of these commands:

brew update
brew doctor
brew install postgresql

For Ubuntu/WSL users

Open your terminal (not in your IDE) and run cd.

Then, run the set of commands below one by one to get started with PSQL:

# Setup psql 
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install postgresql postgresql-contrib
sudo -u postgres createuser --superuser $USER
sudo -u postgres createdb $USER
sudo service postgresql start

# You need to access the psql terminal now, so now use
psql

# User Setup (while in psql terminal)
ALTER USER yourUbuntuUsernameHere WITH PASSWORD 'yourChosenPasswordHere';

# Replace yourUbuntuUsernameHere with your Ubuntu username.
# Replace yourChosenPasswordHere with any password you desire.

# If you see ALTER RESPONSE in the terminal after running the command, you may continue.
# If not, try typing ; and hitting enter.

# To exit the psql mode:
\q

# Setting up secret password file
cd 
touch .pgpass
echo "*:*:*:*:yourChosenPasswordHere" > .pgpass
chmod 0600 .pgpass

Any further issues with this installation, please consult the PSQL docs.

Database setup

In order to access the database locally, create two files in the root directory of the project, with the relevant PGDATABASE key:

File 1: .env.development

PGDATABASE=nc_news

File 2: .env.test

PGDATABASE=nc_news_test

In your IDE terminal, you now may run npm run setup-dbs to create the databases.

Then, to add data to your database, run npm run seed.

Testing

The testing suite used in this project is built on Jest, Jest Extended, Jest Ordered and Supertest.

If you would like to run the development tests, run npm test.

This will seed the nc-news-test database with test data and refer to that for testing.

Running the server

To run the server locally in your terminal, run npm start. You can use CTRL/CMD+C in terminal any time to stop the server.

Then use your preferred REST client to query the endpoints through http://localhost:9090/ or for only GET requests, you may simply enter it into your browser with the endpoint.