smallfurrr / pokedex-express

Build an express app to access the pokedex.

Pokedex Express App

We will build our first web app using Node.js and Express - a Pokedex app.

For this exercise, we will be setting up express to intercept incoming requests on certain routes, reading data from a JSON file, and responding to HTTP requests with simple strings, JSON, or full HTML pages.

Getting Started

1. Fork and clone this repository to your computer
2. Run npm install to install dependencies
3. Look in the starter file called index.js. This will be the entry-point to your app
4. Run node index.js to start a local server on port 3000
5. Open localhost:3000 on your browser and see the home page

Additionally, to improve your workflow, install the nodemon package. Nodemon helps us restart our local server every time it detects a "save" event on index.js. Neat stuff.

# install nodemon in Terminal
npm install -g nodemon

# run nodemon to start server
nodemon index.js

Note on comments:

The comments in this file are deliberately verbose meant to orientate you to an Express app for the first time. Feel free to remove any or all comments.

Deliverables

Use the data in pokedex.json and return a response with details about the requested Pokemon. Specifically:

• Go through pokedex.json to understand how the data is structured. Where are all the pokemon data stored?

• Return a string response with the requested pokemon's information when a request comes with matching the route /pokemon/some-name (eg. localhost:3000/pokemon/bulbasaur should show Bulbasaur's information - for now, show only its weight value)

How to start:

Start by simply reading the pokedex json file (jsonfile.readFile), and then sending it in the response of the request. Remember that these are nested asynchronous callbacks, and that the order the code executes in is very important.

After that the deliverables have to do with looping over the pokedex and doing an action depending on a conditional- e.g., what is the name being requested.

Further

• Handle the case where an invalid pokemon name is provided (eg. /pokemon/some-name). Return a message that says "Could not find information about <pokemon_name> - Is that a new pokemon? Gotta catch em' all!" (replace <pokemon_name> with the requested for pokemon name) Set the status code to 404.

Further

• detect if the user didn't put anthing in the path. Return a message saying "Welcome to the online Pokdex!"

• Instead of showing just the weight, show all the details of the requested pokemon for /pokemon/some-name route, in a full sentence. i.e., "This is Bublasaur, he is 45kg in weight! He also..." etc., etc.

• Expose a new route for /type/some-type that returns a message listing the names of all pokemon that have the specified type (eg. /type/grass should show a page with names of all pokemon of grass type).

• Expose a new route for /weaknesses/some-weakness that returns a message listing the names of all pokemon that have the specified weakness (eg. /weakness/rock).

• Expose a new route for /nextevolution/some-name that returns a message listing the names of all pokemon that the pokemon evolves from (eg. /nextevolution/charizard).