Getting started

To get the Node server running locally:

• Clone this repo
• npm install to install all required dependencies
• Create MongoDb Cluster and Get Connection MongoDb URI
• Set environment variables in config.env under ./config/env
  • Set MONGO_URI = <YOUR_MONGO_URI>
  • Set JWT_SECRET_KEY = <YOUR_SECRET_KEY>
  • Set SMTP_EMAIL=<YOUR_GMAIL_EMAIL>
  • Set SMTP_PASS=<YOUR_GMAIL_PASSWORD>
• node dummy-generator.js --import to load dummy data to database
• npm run dev to start the local server

Code Overview

Dependencies

• expressjs - The server for handling and routing HTTP requests
• jsonwebtoken - For generating JWTs used by authentication
• mongoose - For modeling and mapping MongoDB data to JavaScript
• slugify - For encoding titles into a URL-friendly format
• bcrypt - Hashing Password
• dotenv - Zero-Dependency module that loads environment variables
• multer - Node.js middleware for uploading files
• nodemailer - Send e-mails from Node.js
• express-async-errors - async/await error handling support for express
• object.pickomit - Select req.body fields for field-based authorization

Application Structure

• server.js - The entry point to our application. This file defines our express server and connects it to MongoDB using mongoose. It also inncludes the routes we'll be using in the application.
• config/ - This folder contains configuration for central location environment variables and other configurations.
• routes/ - This folder contains the route definitions (answer, question etc. ) for our API.
• models/ - This folder contains the schema definitions for our Mongoose models (User, Question).
• controllers/ - This folder contains controllers for our API.
• public/ - This folder contains static files for our API.
• middlewares/ - This folder contains middlewares for our API.
• helpers/ - This folder contains helper functions for adapting 3rd party libraries for our API.
• dummy/ - This folder contains dummy data created by dummy-generator.js file for our database.

Error Handling

In middlewares/errors/errorHandler.js, we define a error-handling middleware for handling Mongoose's errors and our own errors.

Authentication

Requests are authenticated using the Authorization header and value Bearer: {{token}}. with a valid JWT.

We define express middlewares in middlewares/authorization/auth.js that can be used to authenticate requests. The required middlewares returns 401 or 403.

API Specifications

Detailed information can be found in this specifications.

Sample HTTP Requests

Sample HTTP requests can be found in this folder.