API: Image Search Abstraction Layer

Node.js | Express | Firebase

Part of a series of Free Code Camp Backend / API projects.
This API queries a Google Custom Search Engine, simplifying the results.
You can also check out what the recent search queries were!

User Story

I can get the image URLs, alt text and page urls for a set of images relating to a given search string.
I can paginate through the responses by adding a ?offset=2 parameter to the URL.
I can get a list of the most recently submitted search strings.

Example Usage

To make a search:

...herokuapp.com/search/cats

To see 10 most recent search queries

...herokuapp.com/recent

To paginate search results

...herokuapp.com/search/cats?offset=2<br>
// results come in groups of 10

Example Response

Search: Returns an array of result objects

{  
"title": "Is Your Cat Left-Handed? Here's How to Tell.", <br>
"alt": "Like humans, domestic cats have a paw preference that's often related to their sex.",<br>
"page_url": "https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2018/01/animals-pets-cats-right-handed/",<br>
"src_url": "https://news.nationalgeographic.com/content/dam/news/2018/01/29/cats-right-paw/01-Cats.ngsversion.1517259605074.adapt.1900.1.jpg"
}

Takeaways

Implemented Firebase in a project
I usually try and avoid libraries as much as possible, but I did implement lodash .get() function, which abstracted this very nicely

const alt = r && r.pagemap && r.pagemap.imageobject && r.pagemap.imageobject[0].caption || null

const src_url = r && r.pagemap && r.pagemap.cse_image && r.pagemap.cse_image[0].src || null

to:

const alt = get(r, 'pagemap.imageobject[0].caption', null)
const src_url = get(r, 'pagemap.cse_image[0].src', null)

Todo

Need to figure out how to implement mocks

mrslwiseman / fcc-image-search