This is a web application for a tour company that offers nature tours in North America. Users can browse the available tours and purchase them using a secure Stripe api.
Although this was a course project, this code is my own. The API developement was very much based on the course content but much of the content and packages used in the course were outdated by a matter of years and no longer relavent. The code and packages used in this project are the most current ( at the time of completion ) and reflects in my ability to go through documantation and find solutions for complex problems
- MongoDB, Express, React and NodeJS.
Users should be able to:
- Securely register and login to web-app
- View individual tour details
- Purchase desired tour using the secure Stripe API
- View personal profile and edit information as per the users preference.
- View purcahsed tours under Bookings in user profile.
** NOTE - This version is not responsive yet. Must be viewed on laptop or desktop screen
- Solution URL: Github-rep
- Live Site URL: Live-Link
- Node.js
- MVC architecture (model, view, controller)
- Server-side redering with Pug templates
- MongoDB / Atlas
- Mongoose V6
- Express
- Postman
- JWT for authentication and authorization (using secure cookies)
- RESTful API design and development with advanced features: filtering, sorting, aliasing, pagination
- Advanced MongoDB: geospatial queries, aggregation pipeline, and operators
- Advanced data modelling: relationships between data, embedding and referencing
- Stripe payment portal implementation
- Advanced error handling
- Heroku - Hosting service
This particular course is packed with content and there are too many things to list so I will try to keep it focused on what I felt was new and important in my personal journey.
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The content that I learned the most from was the advanced usage of MongoDB and Mongoose and the RESTFUL API developement. This includes the use of query strings and the development of query middleware and how to work with the request body. Building advanced data models that use child and parent referencing between them.
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How to use virtual population where you fetch referenced documents that are not persisted in the database and display them in the query result. An example of this is how each individual tour can have many reviews and the reviews have their own model. Rather than creating a reference that persists in the DB, which could contain hundreds of items, we can connect them through a virtual populate.
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Complex error handling. I learned how to separate the operational and programming errors. This way you can send useful messages to the user if something goes wrong with user error and keep the programming errors for use by only the developers. This system was difficult to learn and I'm still a little shaky on the details. Below is a flow chart that helps illustrates the error handling.
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Full payment implementation using Stripe. I have actually used stripe several times in the past but nothing close to how it was used in this project. I was unaware of what could be done with it such personalizing check out screens.
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This was the first time I have used server-side rendering using Pug and Pug templates and also the first time using parcel bundler. It was interesting to work through it but I found the flow not very straight forward overly complex at times. I would like to explore other ways of server-side rendering in the future.
The path forward from this project truthfully leads me back towards other technologies that I have already learned. The knowledge that I gained through the API development, Mongo, Mongoose, and numerous others are invaluable, but I don't plan to continue building in this manner. I would like to use what I have built here and apply it to a React full stack application instead. There are a few routes that we developed for the api that were not implemented on the application. Rather than continue expanding this application, I will build a new one that utilizes all the routes and I can do different styling. I feel this will help me fully understand what we covered in this course.