MAE776569 / Guestbook

Guestbook is an application that allows users to write, and reply to messages.

Guestbook

Guestbook is a MERN stack application that allows users to write, and reply to messages.

Features

• Create an account
• Log in to the application
• Send, update, and delete messages
• Reply to other users

How to install

Navigate to the project root directory and run the following commands in the terminal

• npm run build to build the front-end files

• npm run database to start the database server

• npm start to start the server

Authentication

Session authentication was used to allow the users to log in and create accounts.

How authentication works

Each time a user creates an account or log in a new session is created and the session id is sent to the client.

With each request, the session is validated using the session id.

If the session is valid the request is handled, and if the session is not valid the user is requested to provide a valid session-id or create another session.

The Models

The application consists of four models:

1. User Model

Field	Description
name	The name of the user
username	Unique username for authentication
password	The user's password

2. Session Model

Field	Description
id	Session id
user	Id of the user who created the session
expiresAt	Expiration date of the session

3. Message Model

Field	Description
text	The message body

4. Conversation Model

Field	Description
sender	The user id who sent the message
receiver	The user id who received the message
message	The message id

The API

The front end consumes the API to be able to communicate with the back-end.

All the API endpoints start with /api followed by the endpoints mentioned in the below table.

Endpoint	Method	Body	Description
/login	POST	username, password	login user and create a session
/signup	POST	name, username, password, c-password	create a user account and a session
/logout	POST	no parameters	logout the user and destroy the session
/me	GET	no parameters	get the logged in user information
/users	GET	no parameters	get all users
/conversation	POST	sender, receiver, text	create a new conversation
/conversation	GET	sender, receiver	get all the conversations between the sender and the receiver
/messages/:id	PUT	text	update the message text
/messages/:id	DELETE	no parameters	delete the message