Marker Monkey

"Let the Monkey remember it for you!"

This is the server side of Marker Monkey, a bookmarking web app.

The client side repo is at github.com/tim-hanke/marker-monkey-client.

The live version is hosted at marker-monkey-client.vercel.app.

Why?

I wanted a simple, visually-appealing way to keep track of things I wanted to read online, but didn't have time to read in the moment.

After registering for an account, a user can bookmark a webpage by pasting an URL into the Add Article page on Marker Monkey. Marker Monkey will then attempt to retrieve an image, title, description, and canonical URL for the page and save that info for that user. When viewing their list of saved articles, the user can open them in a new window or delete them from their list.

Technical Details

This project was created with Node.js, using Express and PostgreSQL.

Endpoints

POST /api/users

To register a new user. Accepts full_name, user_name, and password in the request body and if successful returns full_name, user_name, and an id assigned by the server.

POST /api/auth/login

To log in an existing user. Accepts user_name and password in the request body and if successful returns authToken, a JSON Web Token.

POST /api/articles

requires Authentication header

To add an URL to database. Accepts target_url in the request body and if successful returns id, user_id, and article_id of the saved user article.

GET /api/articles

requires Authentication header

Returns all saved articles (each containing id, url, image, title, and description) for the user authorized in the Authentication header.

DELETE /api/user_articles

requires Authentication header

To delete an article from the user's saved articles. Accepts article_id in the request body and if successful returns id of the deleted user article.

Setting Up

• Install dependencies: npm install
• Create development and test databases: createdb monkey, createdb monkey-test
• Create database user: createuser monkey
• Grant privileges to new user in psql:
  • GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON DATABASE monkey TO monkey
  • GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON DATABASE "monkey-test" TO monkey
• Prepare environment file: cp example.env .env
• Replace values in .env with your custom values.
• Bootstrap development database: npm run migrate
• Bootstrap test database: npm run migrate:test

Configuring Postgres

For tests involving time to run properly, your Postgres database must be configured to run in the UTC timezone.

1. Locate the postgresql.conf file for your Postgres installation.
   • OS X, Homebrew: /usr/local/var/postgres/postgresql.conf
2. Uncomment the timezone line and set it to UTC as follows:

# - Locale and Formatting -

datestyle = 'iso, mdy'
#intervalstyle = 'postgres'
timezone = 'UTC'
#timezone_abbreviations = 'Default'     # Select the set of available time zone

Sample Data

• To seed the database for development: psql -U monkey -d monkey -a -f seeds/seed.monkey_tables.sql
• To clear seed data: psql -U monkey -d monkey -a -f seeds/trunc.monkey_tables.sql

Scripts

• Start application for development: npm run dev
• Run tests: npm test