Udacity: Storefront Backend API

This is a backend API build in Nodejs for an online store. It exposes a RESTful API that will be used by the frontend developer to present data to the frontend.

The database schema and and API route information can be found in the REQUIREMENT.md

Setup Instructions

Clone or fork this repository

Install packages

run yarn install or npm install with the clone/forked project directory to install all packages required for the project.

Enviromental Variables Set up

Bellow are the environmental variables that needs to be set in a .env file. This is the default setting that I used for development, but you can change it to what works for you.

NB: The given values are used in developement and testing but not in production.

ENV=test
POSTGRES_HOST=localhost
POSTGRES_PORT=5432
POSTGRES_DATABASE=
POSTGRES_USER=
POSTGRES_PASSWORD=
BCRYPT_PASSWORD=
SALT_ROUNDS=
JWT_TOKEN_PAS=''
TOKEN_SECRET = ''

Set up Database

Create Databases

We shall create the dev and test database.

• connect to the default postgres database as the server's root user psql -U postgres
• In psql run the following to create a user
  • CREATE USER ${POSTGRES_USER} WITH PASSWORD ${POSTGRES_PASSWORD};
• In psql run the following to create the dev and test database
  • CREATE DATABASE ${POSTGRES_DATABASE};
  • CREATE DATABASE ${POSTGRES_DATABASE}_test;
• Connect to the databases and grant all privileges
  • Grant for dev database
    • \c ${POSTGRES_DATABASE}
    • GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON DATABASE ${POSTGRES_DATABASE} TO ${POSTGRES_USER};
  • Grant for test database
    • \c ${POSTGRES_DATABASE}_test
    • GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON DATABASE ${POSTGRES_DATABASE}_test TO ${POSTGRES_USER};

Migrate Database

Navigate to the root directory and run the command below to migrate the database by running db-migrate up

Start App

yarn watch or npm run watch

Running Ports

After start up, the server will start on port 3000 and the database on port 5432

Endpoint Access

All endpoints are described in the REQUIREMENT.md file.

Token and Authentication

Tokens are passed along with the http header as

Authorization   Bearer <token>

Testing

Run test with

yarn test

It sets the environment to test, migrates up tables for the test database, run the test then migrate down all the tables for the test database.

Important Notes

Environment Variables

Environment variables are set in the .env file and added in .gitignore so that it won't be added to github. However, I had provided the names of the variables that need to be set above. I also provided the values that were used in development and testing.

Changing Enviroment to testing

I had set up two databases, one for development and the other for testing. During testing, I had to make sure the testing database is used instead of the developement database.

To achieve this, I set up a variable in the .env file which is by default set to dev. During testing, the command yarn test will set this variable to testing in the package.json. Here is the complete command. "test": "ENV=test && npx tsc && db-migrate --env test up && jasmine && db-migrate db:drop test" in package.json

The first command migrates all tables then the second command changes the environment variable ENV to testing, then the jasmine is run and then after testing, the database is reset.