HrithikMittal / Minature-Stackoverflow-APIs

The project is containing all the existing features of Stack Overflow and with some additional features and also give connection to the AWS services

Minature-Stackoverflow-API's

About The Project

This is the Project of Minature StackOverflow API which is an API's collection which can be used to make the Backend of any Fullstack Application. These are the folllowing features in the given API's

• Create a User
• Post a Question
• Post a Answer to the existing question
• Clap on the answer(upvote)
• Auhtentication and Role based Access to the StackHolders

TECHNOLOGY STACK:

• NodeJS
• ExpressJs
• MongoDB
• EJS/scripting language(optional for UI)
• Heroku

Tasks to be Done

Day1

Start with the installation

• NodeJs ( https://nodejs.org/en/ )
• MongoDB ( https://www.mongodb.com/what-is-mongodb )
  You can use the online Database ( Mongodb Atlas / m-lab)
  For better UI/UX of database you can download ( mongoDB Atlas / Robo3T )
• For editor you can use any IDE. (my fav. - Visual Code)
• If you want the version control also then install git-bash or you can you Github desktop

Day2

• Setup Your Node-Js Project
• Make a SignUp and Login Routes for the user

Read this blogs to take help
https://medium.com/code-to-express/starting-with-nodejs-b70679e8101f
https://medium.com/code-to-express/login-and-signup-page-4a65fec162f1

Day3

So till now a User can SignUp and Login. Now the Next thing to is to make the Question Schema So that a User can Post a Question and also answer to that question. Along with this User can also Upvote the answer. So Please follow these steps:

• Make a Question Schema/Model(Take help from Resources)
• Make a route(private route) to post the Question.
• Make a get(public route) route to get all the Questions.

Day4

So till now a User can Post a Question after they login into the System.So for further Development please follow these steps:

• Make a private route to post the Answer only for the existing Questions.
• Make a public route to get all the Answers and it is better to get the complete Question Model.
• It is just advice to make the array-String in Model/Schema if you want to have more than one value for same entity. For example we want to save many answers of only one question.

Day5

So till now a User Can Post a Answer after they login but anyone can read the anser and question without the login. So for the further Development Please follow these Steps:

• Make a route to increase upvote array and this is an private route.
• Also Make an Seperate route for the profile section where you take all the information and this is a private too.
• Again it is just advice to make the array-String in Model/Schema if you want to have more than one value for same entity. For example we want to save many upvote of only one question.

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Prerequisites

To work with the api you must have to install the following:

• NodeJS - Node.js® is a JavaScript runtime built on Chrome's V8 JavaScript engine.
• MongoDB Server - NoSql Database and server
• Postman - API development environment

Installation

Before doing anything you have to clone or download and unzip the project folder, open terminal and navigate to the project folder and run:

npm install

This will install all the dependencies required by the project.

Getting Started

To start using this API, start your local database server, open terminal and navigate to the project folder and run:

npm run start

If an error occur, check your database server or check if you have installed the prerequisites correctly.

If there was no error, open Postman and create and send a new get request to:

http://localhost:3000/

Expected Output:

{
	message: "Welcome!"
}

Authentication

I used express-session to manage sessions to authenticate. We have isUserLoggedIn, isUserLoggedOut middleware function which checks if the user is authenticated or not. The session token is stored in the database using connect-mongo package and is deleted when the user logout

async function isUserLoggedIn (req, res, next) {
  try {
    if (!(req.session && req.session.user)) {
      return res.status(401).send({
        error: "Unauthorized Access!"
      });
    }else {
      const user = await User.findOne({ _id : req.session.user._id })
      if(user) {
        next();
      } else {
        req.session.user = null;
        return res.status(401).send({
          error: "Unauthorized Access!"
        });
      }
    }
  } catch(e) {
    res.status(400).send({
      error: e
    })
  }
}


// Function to check whether the user is logged out
function isUserLoggedOut (req, res, next) {
  if (req.session && req.session.user) {
    return res.status(200).send({
      message: "User already Logged In!"
    });
  }
  next();
}

module.exports = {
  isUserLoggedIn,
  isUserLoggedOut
}

Note: some of the APIs which are mentionted above are not authenticate so please remember to add it. So it will help to proctect the private routes.

Routes

Profile

S.No.	Route	Method	Access	Description
1.	/	GET	Private	to get personal profile
2.	/	POST	Private	for UPDATING/SAVING personnal user profile
3.	/:username	GET	Public	for getting user profile based on USERNAME.
4.	/find/everyone	GET	Public	for getting user profile of EVERYONE.
5.	/	DELETE	Private	for deleting user based on ID.
6.	/workrole	POST	Private	for adding work profile of a person.
7.	/workrole/:w_id	DELETE	Private	for deleting a specific workrole.

Question

S.No.	Route	Method	Access	Description
1.	/	GET	PUBLIC	for showing all questions.
2.	/	POST	Private	for submitting questions.
3.	/answers/:id	POST	Private	for submitting answers to questions.
4.	/upvote/:id	POST	Private	for upvoting.

Deployment

This api can be hosted on platform like heroku, aws, and others. MongoDB Atlas or Matlab can be used for remote database.
For instance, the application can be deployed on Heroku by creating and registering an account. Following, create a new app and choose a deployment method (terminal or github) and follow the instruction there. Remote database can be created using Mongodb Atlas or Matlab.
For Mongodb Atlas, you need to just to create your account and make a new cluster and link the cluster to your application through a URL. Following the given steps, you would have a remote application up and running.

Contributing

If you are the helping and contributing one, your efforts and suggestion are always welcomed.