dakuo / TrustNetBackend

TrustNetBackend

TrustNetBackend is a Node.js server that uses a MySQL backend. Using this server, you can follow people or news sources with RSS feeds, boost their content to all or specific targets, add your own posts or import articles from external sources, and post your assessments of the accuracy of articles.

TrustNetBackend considers TrustnetClient as its client, although it can be configured to use other clients.

Setup Instructions

Install Git and clone this repository

• git clone https://github.com/farnazj/TrustNetBackend

Install Node Module Dependencies

cd to the root directory of the project where package.json is. Run:

• npm install

Database Configurations

Install MySQL Server. Connect to MySQL server using MySQL client and create a database for TrustNetBackend to connect to. Create a user and grant them privileges on the database.

• mysql -u root -p (type the root password when prompted)
• CREATE DATABASE db_name;
• CREATE USER user_name IDENTIFIED BY 'password';
• GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON db_name.* TO user;
• FLUSH PRIVILEGES;

⚠️ If in trying to connect to the database, Node throws an authentication error, do the following:

• ALTER USER user IDENTIFIED WITH MYSQL_NATIVE_PASSWORD BY 'password'

Sequelize Configurations

TrustNetBackend uses Sequelize as an ORM to connect to the database. The database configurations for Sequelize should be in ./config/database.json. Copy the contents of ./config/example_database.json and change the fields username, password, database, and host for whichever environment you are running TrustNetBackend in (the default environment is development).

Setup Environment Variables

The server uses dotenv to load environment variables from a .env file into process.env.

• Create a .env file in the root directory of the project (no name before the extension)

• Place the following variables in the file and assign values to them:

  • ADMIN_KEY=secret (ADMIN_KEY is used for registering RSS feeds of news publishing entities)
  • SESSION_KEY=secret
  • NODE_ENV (one of 'development', 'test', or 'production'. The default is set to 'development')
  • LOG_LEVEL (refer to Winston's documentation)
  • EMAIL_USER (the email address from which to send account verification and password recovery instructions)
  • EMAIL_PASS (password of the above email address)

Redis Server

This Nodejs server stores session ids in a Redis store. In addition, Redis is used for message passing between the processes of the server. You should have Redis installed and running on your machine before launching the server.

Specify the Client

Upon user signup and also for retrieving an account whose password the user has forgotten, this server sends an email containing the full URL of the client path that should confirm activation/password recovery. Therefore, the client base URL needs to be specified in './lib/constants'

Run TrustNetBackend Server

cd to the root directory of the project. Run:

• npm start