Trivia App

A project for Udacity"s Full Stack Web Developer Nanodegree Program, Part 2: API Development and Documentation.

Check out the original repo for more information on the project, or see the rest of the projects completed for the nanodegree.

Tech Stack (Dependencies)

Backend Dependencies

• Flask
• SQLAlchemy

Frontent Dependencies

• React

API Documentation

Getting started

• The app is run locally, and is not hosted as a base URL. The backend is hosted at the default http:127.0.0.1:5000/.
• No authentication or API keys are required

Error Handling

Errors are returned in the following format:

{
  "code": 404,
  "description": "The requested URL was not found on the server. If you entered the URL manually please check your spelling and try again.",
  "name": "Not Found"
}

The following types of errors are returned, depending on the request:

• 404: Not found
• 405: Method not allowed
• 422: Unprocesseable request

Endpoints

GET /categories

Get a list of the categories questions can belong in.

Sample

• Request: curl -X GET http:127.0.0.1:5000/categories
• Response:

  {
    "categories": {
      "1": "Science",
      "2": "Art",
      "3": "Geography",
      "4": "History",
      "5": "Entertainment",
      "6": "Sports"
    }
  }

---

GET /questions?page={integer}

Get a list of questions.

Query strings

• page (integer, optional): Questions are split into pages of 10. Set a value to return the specified page, or the first page if left out.

Sample

• Request: curl -X GET http:127.0.0.1:5000/questions?page=1
• Response:

  {
  "categories": {
    "1": "Science",
    "2": "Art",
    "3": "Geography",
    "4": "History",
    "5": "Entertainment",
    "6": "Sports"
  },
  "current_category": null,
  "questions": [
    {
      "answer": "Apollo 13",
      "category": 5,
      "difficulty": 4,
      "id": 2,
      "question": "What movie earned Tom Hanks his third straight Oscar nomination, in 1996?"
    },
    ...
  ],
  "total_questions": 19
  }

---

DELETE /questions/{question_id}

Delete the specified question.

Sample

• Request: curl -X DELETE http:127.0.0.1:5000/questions/1
• Response: An empty json object will be returned if successful.

---

POST /questions

Request Body

Search

• SearchTerm (string, required): Term to search for. The search will be case-insensitive.

{
  "searchTerm": "foo"
}

Add a new question

• question (string, required): The question to add
• answer (string, required): Answer to the question being added
• category (integer, required): Category the question belongs to
• difficulty (integer, required): Difficulty of the question

{
  "question": "What is the largest mammal?",
  "answer": "Blue whale",
  "category": 1,
  "difficulty": 2
}

Query strings

• page (integer, optional): Questions are split into pages of 10. Set a value to return the specified page, or the first page if left out.

Sample

Search

• Request: curl -X POST http://127.0.0.1:5000/questions -H "Content-Type: application/json" -d '{"searchTerm":"The"}'
• Response:

  {
  "categories": {
      "1": "Science",
      "2": "Art",
      "3": "Geography",
      "4": "History",
      "5": "Entertainment",
      "6": "Sports"
  },
  "current_category": null,
  "questions": [
      {
      "answer": "Maya Angelou",
      "category": 4,
      "difficulty": 2,
      "id": 5,
      "question": "Whose autobiography is entitled 'I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings'?"
      },
      ...
  ],
  "total_questions": 11
  }

Add a new question

• Request: curl -X POST http://127.0.0.1:5000/questions -H "Content-Type: application/json" -d '{"question": "What is the largest mammal?", "answer": "Blue whale", "category": 1, "difficulty": 2}'
• Response:

  {
  "categories": {
      "1": "Science",
      "2": "Art",
      "3": "Geography",
      "4": "History",
      "5": "Entertainment",
      "6": "Sports"
  },
  "current_category": null,
  "questions": [
      {
      "answer": "Maya Angelou",
      "category": 4,
      "difficulty": 2,
      "id": 5,
      "question": "Whose autobiography is entitled 'I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings'?"
      },
      ...
  ],
  "total_questions": 11
  }

---

GET /categories/{category_id}/questions

Get a list of questions based on the specified category.

Query strings

• page (integer, optional): Questions are split into pages of 10. Set a value to return the specified page, or the first page if left out.

Sample

• Request: curl -X GET http://127.0.0.1:5000/categories/1/questions
• Response:

  {
  "categories": {
      "1": "Science",
      "2": "Art",
      "3": "Geography",
      "4": "History",
      "5": "Entertainment",
      "6": "Sports"
  },
  "current_category": "Science",
  "questions": [
      {
      "answer": "The Liver",
      "category": 1,
      "difficulty": 4,
      "id": 20,
      "question": "What is the heaviest organ in the human body?"
      },
      ...
  ],
  "total_questions": 3
  }

---

POST /quizzes

Play the quiz. Returns a single random question belonging to the category.

Request body

• quiz_category (string, required): The category to pull questions from.
• previous_questions (list of int, required): IDs to remove from pool of possible questions

{
  "quiz_category": { "id": "2", "type": "Art" },
  "previous_questions": [16, 17, 18]
}

Sample

• Request: curl -X POST http://127.0.0.1:5000/quizzes -H "Content-Type: application/json" -d '{"quiz_category": {"id": "2", "type": "Art"}, "previous_questions": [16, 17, 18]}'
• Response:

  {
    "question": {
      "answer": "Jackson Pollock",
      "category": 2,
      "difficulty": 2,
      "id": 19,
      "question": "Which American artist was a pioneer of Abstract Expressionism, and a leading exponent of action painting?"
    }
  }