Before running the application, first install nodejs and npm:
# apt install nodejs npm
Setup guide:
$ git clone https://github.com/jragoon/food-connection
$ cd food-connection
$ npm install
Following the instructions above will clone the repository and install the necessary dependencies. If dependencies change in the project, you will need to
run npm install again.
To start the express server, do the following:
$ cd backend
$ npm start
This will run the nodemon (nodemonitor) which adjusts to live changes in the backend. You should see a message similar to Server is running on port: XXXX.
Before you can run expo for the first time, you must first install it using npm:
# npm install -g expo-cli
To run the application and test it on your phone, first install the Expo app from the Google Play Store / iOS store.
Then, run npm start while in the food-connection directory. This will bring up and host an expo server locally. At this point, it will provide a QR
code you can scan and run a test version of your app on your phone.
We currently have a free-tier cluster through MongoDB atlas.
This means that we have 512MB of storage space, 500 available connections, and shared CPU time. It is hosted in the Eastern US, and can be trivially upgraded in the future. Behind the scenes it is being hosted with Azure.
In order to connect to this account, you must enter the password in the connection string (the ATLAS_URI variable in backend/.env). Additionally, all calls in the app that reference api endpoints must reference your localhost. If you get a network request failed exception, make sure that all of your calls are valid addresses on the same network as your mobile device.
Under backend, the models directory contains the declarations of our schema. Here is where we define schemas for users, food, etc. The DB is referenced in the application through the use of custom API endpoints that are defined in backend/routes.
To manually test an API endpoint and how it responds to GET/POST requests from our application, you may use a REST tool such
as Insomnia. Here is an example of adding a user to our database now that the backend is set up:
Additionally, this is what it looks like in the MongoDB Atlas dashboard after the request is successful:
