CodersCamp 2021 - Project Server Side JavaScript - PetsAdoptAndCarePortal

Project goals

The aim of the project was to gain practical skills in Node.js, creating REST APIs, handling NoSQL databases and CRUD operations, and user authentication and authorization

Team behind the project

Mentor:

• Jędrzej Ratajczak

Contributors:

• Dawid Starzyk
• Dawid Żłobecki
• Krzysztof Gumularz
• Przemysław Gajowczyk
• Marcin Kukułka

Backend service description

How to run the backend

1. You can clone the repository, install the dependencies with npm install and run the app with npm run start

2. You can also just use the production version of the application available at https://coderscamp2021-backend-pets.herokuapp.com/doc

For both options be aware that you have to

1. Create your own account using /api/register endpoint
2. Log in using /api/login endpoint
3. Then you will be able to access the user endpoints

Endpoint documentation

All endpoints with sample requests are described in Swagger

Backend functionalities

At this step all you have to do is create file .env based on .env.example

• .env file is a source of environment variables for this application

• PORT - on which server will start

• JWT_SECRET - defines a compact and self-contained way for securely transmitting information between parties as a JSON object.

• DB_URL - to connect to MongoDB database

• User management/Authorization - Users are being authorized using the token sent in each request header that has to match the token from the response sent after login.

• Password management - Password is being hashed during the registration and is safely stored in the database in hashed form.

• Password reset - When password reset is requested then email with password reset link is sent with authentication token added as URL parameter.

Used technologies

• Node.JS - Javascript runtime for building server-side JS applications
• Express - Node.JS framework
• MongoDB - Document database for data storage - in our project cloud MongoDB Atlas service was used
• Mongoose - Data Modelling Library for MongoDB
• Nodemailer - Mailing library
• JsonWebToken - Tokenization method for users authentication
• BCrypt - Password hashing library for password management
• Heroku - Platform-as-a-Service used for application deployment

Api folder content

• App folder - source code for the backend application
  • Controllers - functionalities for directly responding to user actions
  • DB - folder - code for connecting to database and models
    • Models - data models
    • Mongoose - connecting db
    • Validators - validation of requests
  • Middlewares - functions for request data manipulations before executing root functionalities
  • Routes - endpoint routes definitions
• index.js - main application instantiation