MoviePool API

What is this about?

A RESTful API for movie lovers that want to be able to access information about different movies. It’s the M, E and N from the MERN stack and connects to a database that is hosted on MongoDB Atlas.

Find the R (MoviePool Client) here.

This RESTful API has been built split into several tasks for Achievement 2 and 3 in Career Foundry's Full-Stack Web Development Program. The non-relational database has been built by me and is hosted on MongoDB Atlas.

Swagger API documentation

• https://movie-pool.onrender.com/documentation

MoviePool Client

• https://movie-pool-app.netlify.app/

Technical requirements

• MERN stack must be used (MongoDB, Express, Node.js)
• API
  • must use RESTful architecture
  • must at least use commonly used HTTP methods (POST, GET, PUT, DELETE), following CRUD
  • must at least use 3 middleware functions
  • must be tested in Postman - web or app
  • business logic must be modeled with Mongoose
  • must include user authentication and authorization
  • must include data validation logic
  • must meet data security regulations
  • must be deployed to either Heroku or Render
  • must use JSDoc for technical documentation (see feature branch)
• the database
  • must be non-relational
  • must contain two collections: users movies with various documents
  • must be build using MongoDB (MongoDB Community Server, Mongo Shell, MongoDB Database Tools) with "code first" approach: first design endpoints, then design database
  • must be hostet on MongoDB Atlas

Feature requirements / Accessible information, defining the endpoints

users

• new users
  • are able to sign up
    • userName
    • password
    • email
    • birthDate
• registered users
  • are able to login
    • userName
    • password
  • are able to logout
  • are able to update their personal information
    • userName
    • password
    • email
    • birthDate
    • favoriteMovies
  • have access to information about movies
  • are able to add a movie to their list of favorite movies
  • are able to delete a movie off of their list of favorite movies
  • are able to delete their account

movies

• return a list of all movies
• return data about a single movie by title
  • title
  • description
  • genre
    • genreName
    • description
  • director
    • directorName
    • bio
    • birthDate
    • deathDate
  • imagePath
  • featured
• return data about a genre by genreName (e.g. "Thriller")
• return data about a director by directorName
  • bio
  • birthDate
  • deathDate

Languages, Libraries, Frameworks, Tools

• HTML
• JavaScript
• Node.js - https://nodejs.org/en/
• MongoDB - to build the non-relational database which is hosted on MongoDB Atlas
  • brew tap mongodb/brew to install the MongoDB custom 'tap'
  • brew install mongodb-community - will install the latest available production release of MongoDB Community Server, Mongo Shell, MongoDB Database Tools
• MongoDB Community Server
  • any time one wants to interact with the database, view the app or use Mongo Shell
• Mongo Shell
  • start the MongoDB Community Server, you need to have it running any time you want to interact with your database, view your app, or use the Mongo shell brew services start mongodb-community
  • run mongosh
  • exit with exit or quit()
  • stop the MongoDB Community Server brew services stop mongodb-community
  • https://www.mongodb.com/docs/manual/tutorial/install-mongodb-on-os-x/
  • https://github.com/mongodb/homebrew-brew

Dependencies

• bcrypt for password hashing
• body-parser to read the body of HTTP requests to get additional information not stored in the request URLs
• cors to control which domains have access to the API
• express server-side minimalist programming framework for Node.js
• express-validator for server-side validation
• jsonwebtoken for token-based authentication, via Bearer token
• mongoose for defining the data schema, for data modeling the business logic, for creating the models/the business logic layer and for connecting to the database (to install Mongoose, the MongoDB Server must be up)
• morgan as soon as the server is started, this will log time and date of the request, request method, URL path, response code, number of characters the response sent back to the terminal and to the log.txt you find in the project
• passport, passport-jwt, passport-local for authentication and authorization
• uuid to generate unique IDs - not used at the moment

Dev Dependencies

• dotenv to create an environment variable to connect to the remote MongoDB Atlas URI
• nodemon for watching for any changes in the code and automatically restarting the server
• jsdoc for technical documentation (see feature branch)

Engines

• "node": ">=14 <15" explicitely set due to a MongoDB error in connection to hosting on Render, see here: Specifying a Node version

How to run this?

• clone project
• cd into project
• run npm install
• beware of the .env file that is not committed; when cloning, you won't have the CONNECTION_URI variable and you won't have the assigned value (the MongoDB URI) so the project won't work

How to start the server with Nodemon

• cd into correct directory and start the server with npm run dev
• this will start the project on http://localhost:8080/
• stop the server with ctrl c

How to start the server with only Node.js

• cd into correct directory and start the server with node index.js
• for each change in code, you need to manually exit and restart the server
• stop the server with ctl c

How to throw Swagger documentation on localhost

• cd into correct directory and start the server with npm run start
• swagger doc will be on http://localhost:8080/documentation
• stop the server with ctl c

How to test endpoints in Postman

• https://www.postman.com/
• cd into correct directory and start Node.js repl terminal with node index.js or npm run dev if you use Nodemon
• go to Postman (either browser or app)
• test the endpoints

Heads-up: JSDoc set-up (note to myself)

• as jsdoc is installed locally via npm install --save-dev jsdoc to trigger build, run

./node_modules/.bin/jsdoc yourJavaScriptFile.js

• ONLY WORKS IN FEATURE BRANCH!
• (if installed globally, you could run jsdoc yourJavaScriptFile.js)

Swagger Sources

• https://github.com/OAI/OpenAPI-Specification/releases
• https://editor.swagger.io/
• https://petstore.swagger.io/?_ga=2.223173272.2032246104.1680158771-1614811837.1678349012#/user/deleteUser
• https://swagger.io/docs/specification/basic-structure/
• https://swagger.io/tools/swagger-ui/
• https://swagger.io/docs/open-source-tools/swagger-ui/usage/installation/
• https://www.npmjs.com/package/swagger-ui-express
• https://www.npmjs.com/package/yaml

Postman Sources

• API documentation with Postman - this one is a bit older. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ayo_KdLLcTA
• API Documentation | The Exploratory - this one is a bit newer https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XNVo9WkCoak
• old (!) documentation / WIP https://documenter.getpostman.com/view/26201251/2s93RRvDAq

JSDoc Sources

• https://www.npmjs.com/package/jsdoc
• https://jsdoc.app/
• https://jsdoc.app/index.html#block-tags
• https://jsdoc.app/about-getting-started.html
• https://github.com/jsdoc/jsdoc