This application was created in my journey of learning Node.js and backend development. The purpose of the application is to allow users to track the status of tasks that they set for themselves. Features of the application include user:
- User login
- User creation
- Security features:
- User authentification
- Password hashing
- File upload (for profile picture)
- Automatic email notifications.
The environmental variables needed for the functioning of this application are:
- PORT
- SENDGRID_API_KEY
- JSON_WEBTOKEN_SECRET
- DATABASE_URL
- DATABASE_NAME
As mentioned previously there are numerous ways that the user can interact with the application. All interactions are achieved through htpp endpoints. All interactions are documented below
POST : https://hexdro-task-manager.herokuapp.com/users
Body:
{
"name":"Full name",
"age":20
"email":"example@gmail.com",
"password":"1234567"
}
The password must contain at least 7 characters and cannot contain 'password'
- This will return a JSON web token that needs to be used when performing all other operations other than login.
- Automatically sends welcome email to user
POST : https://hexdro-task-manager.herokuapp.com/users/login
Body:
{
"name":"Full name",
"password":"1234567"
}
- This will return a JSON web token that needs to be used when performing all other operations other than login.
POST : https://hexdro-task-manager.herokuapp.com/users/logout
auth: This requires a bearer token provided when creating a new user, or logging into the user
- Removes current token from list of tokens that can be used to access user data
POST : https://hexdro-task-manager.herokuapp.com/users/logout
auth: This requires a bearer token provided when creating a new user, or logging into the user
- Removes all tokens from list of tokens that can be used to access user data
- User will have to login again after this to recieve new token
POST : https://hexdro-task-manager.herokuapp.com/users/me/avatar
auth: This requires a bearer token provided when creating a new user, or logging into the user
body : {
"key":"upload",
"value":avatar.jpg
}
- Allows user to upload image to database to be used as the user's profile picture
- Uploading an avatar will overwrite the current avatar
- The image must be a jpg,jpeg or png
- The image cannot be larger than 1 MB
DELETE : https://hexdro-task-manager.herokuapp.com/users/me
auth: This requires a bearer token provided when creating a new user, or logging into the user
- Deletes specified user data, and all tasks associated with user from the database
- BREAKS RULE OF ONLY ALLOWING USERS TO INTERACT WITH THEIR OWN DATA
- Kept in production for learning oppertunities
- Automatically sends goodbye email to user
DELETE : https://hexdro-task-manager.herokuapp.com/users/insert_user_id_here
auth: This requires a bearer token provided when creating a new user, or logging into the user
- Deletes user data, and all tasks associated with user from the database
DELETE : https://hexdro-task-manager.herokuapp.com/users/me/avatar
auth: This requires a bearer token provided when creating a new user, or logging into the user
- Removes user avatar from the database
GET : https://hexdro-task-manager.herokuapp.com/users/me
auth: This requires a bearer token provided when creating a new user, or logging into the user
- Returns user information of the user currently logged in
- Purposefully omits information like password, login tokens
GET : https://hexdro-task-manager.herokuapp.com/users
auth: This requires a bearer token provided when creating a new user, or logging into the user
- Returns user information of all users stored on the database
- Purposefully omits information like password, login tokens
- BREAKS RULE OF ONLY ALLOWING USERS TO INTERACT WITH THEIR OWN DATA
- Kept in production for learning oppertunities
PATCH : https://hexdro-task-manager.herokuapp.com/users/me
auth: This requires a bearer token provided when creating a new user, or logging into the user
body:
{
name":"New name",
"age":20
"email":"new_email@gmail.com",
"password":"1234567"
}
- Updates information of the user currently logged in
- Password can be sent to datebase as plain text but will be hahed before saving
POST : https://hexdro-task-manager.herokuapp.com/tasks
auth: This requires a bearer token provided when creating a new user, or logging into the user
Body:
{
"description":"Wash the windows",
"completed":false
}
- Creates a task associated with user currently logged in
completedset to false by default unless specified as completed in BODY of http request
GET : https://hexdro-task-manager.herokuapp.com/tasks?sortBy=completed:desc
auth: This requires a bearer token provided when creating a new user, or logging into the user
- Returns all tasks associated with user currently logged in
- Allows user to sort by completed (
descorasc)
GET : https://hexdro-task-manager.herokuapp.com/tasks/inset_task_id_here
auth: This requires a bearer token provided when creating a new user, or logging into the user
- Returns task specified as long as it is associated with user currently logged in
PATCH : https://hexdro-task-manager.herokuapp.com/tasks/inset_task_id_here
auth: This requires a bearer token provided when creating a new user, or logging into the user
body:
{
"description":"Updated!",
completed:"true"
}
- Updates information of specified task, provided it is associated with user currently logged in
PATCH : https://hexdro-task-manager.herokuapp.com/tasks/inset_task_id_here
auth: This requires a bearer token provided when creating a new user, or logging into the user
body:
- Deletes specified task, provided it is associated with user currently logged in
Some of the tools users to create this application have been listed below.
Heroku is a tool we can use to deploy node application, and is the tool that has been used to deplot this simple Weather Application.
We need to install the cli tools to deploy the application to a live server.
Once Heroku has been installed we can login use the following command to login to the Heroku service from your terminal:
heroku login
We can then setup an SSH connection with Heroku with the following command:
heroku keys:add
If you are told there is no existing SSH Key, type Y to let Heroku create one
The next step is to create the Heroku application using the command listed below. This will provide us with two URLs. The first being the project link on Heroku, and the second being a github link where we should upload our source code for hosting on the Heroku services.
heroku create application_here
In order to serve the application with environmental variables, we need to set the environmental variables for the Heroku app. This can be achieved with the following commands.
heroku config:set key=value
where key is the environmental variable and value is its value.
To see the current environmental variable simply run:
heroku config
Commit the project
git push heroku master
To run the mondodb server on your machine once it has been installed, run the following command to start the server when testing on the localhost
mongodb/bin/mongod.exe --dbpath=D:\mongodb-database
For this tutorial we make us of POSTMAN to make http requests. While this is not for handling requests on the client side, it allows us to test the API without having to create a client.
We can find a list of all the possible HTPP statues at httpstatuses.
In order to keep passwords securely stored on the database, this application makes use of bcryptjs to hash user passwords.
This application uses jsonwebtokens to serve tokens to users once they have logged in.
This application uses multer to upload binary data to the db. We also use sharp to format images uploaded to the server
To send emails this application uses the sendgrid service.
The env-cmd module is used to load in environment variables to safely store API keys.
This applicaiton hosts a mongoDB database on atlas and mongodb atlas has been used for dev access.
Two powerful testing frameworks include JEST and MOCHA. For this application we are using JEST.
SuperTest is used for testing express applications.
The follow script can be added to package.json
"scripts": {
"test": "env-cmd -f ./config/test.env jest --watch --runInBand"
},
We can then configure jest in package.json:
"jest":{
"testEnvironment":"node"
},
"keywords": [],
...
This will trigger the script created to run JEST tests:
npm run test