restifyAPI

Restify API Application using restify

Technologies used

restify Restify Documentation. 2 restify-jwt-community for JSON web token
restify-errors for error handling while using restify
Mongo and Mongoose as the CRM
bcrypt to hash user passwords so not to save them as plain text

What I learned

Greater working knowledge of building a RESTful API.
Restify gained knowledge on how to use another framework based on express.
More understanding of how to use JSON web tokens to authenticate a user and protecting routes from un-authorized users
async / await I now understand more on how to use the javascript async / await with try{} catch{} blocks instead or the typical .then() .catch() when working with promises
Deeper learning and usage of es6

Plan to do

I plan on using this api to create a Vuejs or Angular app to go on top of it and create a full working web application.

How to run

You will need postman installed on your machine or the chrome extension for it
Mongo Cloud Atlas account.
In the root directory of the project you will need to create a new config.js file.
Clone the repo: https://github.com/LjCraft12/restifyAPI.git
Either open the repo in your IDE or in your terminal and run:

npm i

This will install the the dependencies for the project

Aftter the installation finishes you can start the server with: npm run dev this will open a port on your machine at localhost:3000. Avaliable routes are (routes are being used by postman there is no front facing web app):

GET localhost:3000/customers
Get localhost:3000/customers/id <- where id is the _id created by mongoose when a new customer is created and will return a single user.
POST localhost:3000/customers <- this route will allow you to create a new user (if you are a registered user).
Delete localhost:3000/customers/id <- Again the id is the _id created by mongoose this route will delete the customer from the DB.
POST localhost:3000/register <- This route will allow you to register a new user that can then make a new customer.
POST localhost:3000/auth <- Passing in any created user will return you user and their token

Creating a new user

Open up postman
Set the request type to POST. the route should be localhost:3000/register and set the headers to: Content-Type application/json.
In the body tab set the type to raw you will also need to then create a new user in JSON format with an email and password (Both are strings).
After sending it off you can check your Mongo Cloud Atlas cluster collections for the newly created user.

Creating a customer

Now that you have a user registered you can create a new customer.

In post man set the request type to POST. The route should be localhost:3000/customers and set the headers to: Content-Type application/json.
You will then need to get the users token. You can do this by opening a new tab in postman point at the route localhost:3000/auth and set the request type to POST.
Copy the token that has been retrieved and paste it in the POST request tab for creating a new customer. The key will need to be set to Authorization and the value is set to: jwt (don't forget the space between jwt and the token you paste in). .
In the body tab set the type to raw customers are also created in a json format with name, email, and the optional balance (name and email are both strings the balance is a type of number and if left blank the default balance will be 0).
You should then check you work with looking back into your atlas cluster to see if a new collection called customers was created.

Updating a customer

Now that you have a customer in the DB its time to update. (All steps will require you to have a token already set refer to creating a customer if you need a new token and the header still needs to have a Content-Type application/json)

In post man set the request type to PUT. The route should be localhost:3000/customers/id (again where id is the _id created by mongoose this can be found in the db or by retrieving the list of users).
You can either update the whole user or just a single part of the user such as just their name, email or password.
Again you can check your Mongo Atlas cluster to ensure the update took.

Getting back all the customer in the DB

Now that you have a user in the DB we can retrieve them from the db (You will need your Auth token)

In Postman set the req type to GET and the route to localhost:3000/customers That's it you should have back a list of users in your DB

Deleting a user

Now that you have too many users in your DB its time to delete them (As always you will need your token)

In Postman set the request type to Delete and the route to locahost:3000/customers/id (Yup you guessed it the id is the _id of the user) That's all you need to do to delete a user again check your DB to ensure the user was deleted

ernesth65 / restifyAPI