spencerrwise / extinct-mammals

Simple NodeJS/mongoDB API

extinct-mammals

Simple NodeJS/mongoDB API

##Objective This will help solidify your understanding of mongoDB alongside of NodeJS using a popular ORM for mongo called mongoose You'll build a public API of extinct mammals retrieved from Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_extinct_mammals

##Day One ###Step 1: Build your project

• Create your package.json file with mongoose and express as dependencies
• Make sure mongod is running in your terminal
• Create a server.js file that will hold all of your API's logic
• Be sure to require and initialize express

###Step 2: Setup the mongoDB connection (reference: http://mongoosejs.com/docs/)

• In your server.js require the mongoose library and create a connection to your database server
• Create your mammalSchema with three fields: name, type, and year_extinct
• Use express to create two endpoints on /, one a GET and one a POST

GET /

• returns a JSON array of all extinct mammals, ordered by name

POST /

• saves a new Mammal model based on the fields given in the JSON request

###Step 3: Insert some data

• Using your new API and the wikipedia article, add some extinct mammals: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_extinct_mammals

##Day Two ###Step 4: Break up your project into multiple modules

• (You can use https://gist.github.com/fwielstra/1025038 as a good example)
• Create an api.js to hold your get and post calls
• Create a mammal.js that contains the schema and model creation for Mammal
• Create an app.js file that brings everything together:
  • it should require the express and mongoose modules
  • it should instantiate express and connect to the mongo server
  • it should require the api module and connect the endoints to their appropriate functions in api.js
  • it should start the server listening on a desired port

###Step 5: Routing and fetching

• Use a more complicated routing structure for your GET / call:
  • change the route to point to /mammals rather than just /
  • make it so that if someone requests /mammals/marsupials or mammals/rodents the call will return only mammals of that type
  • include an order_by query param that instructs the API to order the results by the given field

###Step 6 (Black Diamond): Query by id

• Use regex to determine whether someone is asking for /mammals/:id or /mammals/:type and return the appropriate response

##Integration Tests with Jasmine ###Step 1: Create your spec file You can name it whatever you'd like, but since we're testing the API, let's call it test/spec/apispec.js ###Step 2: Make sure you have the correct setup

• Make sure mongodb is running (either in another tab or via mongod &)
• Make sure node app.js is running and has no problems
• Make sure you're required the request lib in your spec
• "Describe" your test case, maybe something like "tests the api"

###Step 3: Create a spec to make sure GET /mammals returns data

• NOTE: make sure you have some data in your collection
• Hint: Use the "toThrow" matcher in Jasmine to make sure try to parse JSON from the response body doesn't throw an error:

request("http://localhost:8888/mammals", function(err, response, body) {
 var checkJSON = function() {
  //if body isn't valid JSON, this will throw an error and break stuff
  JSON.parse(body);
 }
 expect(checkJSON).not.toThrow();
 done();
});

###Step 4: Create specs to make sure both variations of /mammals work GET /mammals should work as well as /mammals/marsupial (or however you input the type)

###Step 5: Create a spec to ensure that POST /mammals works You're going to need to utilize the post method of the request library, like so:

request({
 uri: url+"/mammals",
 method: 'POST',
 json: {
  "name": "TEST MAMMAL", 
  "type": "test", 
  "year_extinct": 2013
 } 
}, function(err, response, body) {
 //code for assertion and done() here
});