Northcoders News API

Summary

This repository was created during the software development bootcamp by NorthCoders, back-end project week. It allows users to make HTTP requests to a news server to retrieve articles on various topics, post, view and delete comments on those articles, as well as upvote and downvote articles.

Setup instructions

Please follow these steps to run the project locally:

1. You will need to make sure that you have Node and npm installed on your local machine. Type these two commands be into the terminal:

   node --version
   npm --version
   

   If both return a sensible looking version number, proceed to the next step. Otherwise, look into these instructions for setting up Node.js and npm.

2. You will also need PostgreSQL installed and password configured. Run the following command in terminal to see if you have it:

   psql
   

   If it returns something similar to this output:

   psql (<version> (<operating system>))
   Type "help" for help
   
   <username>=#
   

   then you are all set. You can exit PostgreSQL engine by typing \q into the terminal and continue with the next step. Otherwise, download appropriate PostgreSQL distributable here and follow these docs to set up .pgpass file.

3. Clone this repo onto your machine - follow these instructions, in case you are not familiar with cloning Git repos. All of the following steps assume that console commands are run from the root directory of the repo.

4. At the root level create two files named: .env.development and .env.test These will contain environment variables necessary to connect to development and test databases respectively.

   • Place the following line in .env.development:

     PGDATABASE=nc_news
     

   • Place the following line in .env.test:

     PGDATABASE=nc_news_test
     

5. Run the following command in the console to install dependencies. This will add all packages that the project needs to run in production, as well us all packages that you will need for development.

   npm install
   

6. Run the following command to create local databases;

   npm run setup-dbs
   

7. Run the following command to seed the local development database.

   npm run seed
   

After doing all of the above you should be all set to run the code, test it and play with the functionality locally.

How to run the code

To start up the API server, run the following command:

npm run start

This should yield an output: The server is listening on port 9090 and the console wil appear to be hanging (you can break the connection by sending Ctrl+C into the console when you need to). You can now use Insomnia, PostMan or other API development platform to make requests to the localhost on post 9090 to access development data. Send GET command to http://localhost:9090/api/ to retrieve the list of all available endpoints.

You can also run test on the code using the test database. The test suite for this API was developed using jest.js package. In order to run the test suite type the following command into the terminal:

npm run test

This command will run all the files in __tests__ folder and output the test results. You can add any distinct part of a file name to the end of the above command to only run the tests in that file.

Additional information

This diagram illustrates the exports --> require links between all packages.

This ER diagram illustrates the database structure.

Disclaimer

All of the code in this repo apart from that in .husky and seeds directories, setup.sql and utils.test.js file was created by the owner. The latter, as well as the data in development and test databases was provided as part of the course material. Owner has to the best of their ability removed and replaced any potentially harmful content in the articles table. Any remaining data is not necessarily an accurate reflection of the repo owner's beliefs.