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Assignment: Building a RESTful API with Node.js and Express

Summary

This project demonstrates the implementation of a RESTful API using Node.js and Express. The Express server acts as a middle API, handling CRUD requests from the frontend and persisting data obtained from The Cat API. The server fetches random cat images from The Cat API, saves the fetched data in JSON files for persistent storage, and defines API endpoints for cat image operations. Additionally, a simple frontend is created to interact with the Express server API, allowing users to view random cats, give the cat a nickname, saving cats to their collection, and delete cat images.

Table of Contents

  1. Development
  2. Server ENV Variables
  3. Starting up the App
  4. Tech Stack
  5. Features
  6. Testing

Development

JTC Cats requires Node.js v16+ to run. Tested on version v20.11.0

This App uses NPM Node Package Manager to manage its dependencies and packages.

Install the client dependencies by running the following command in the client directory:

npm install

Install the server dependencies by running the following command in the server directory:

npm install

Server environment variables

Get a free API key from The Cat API. Create a .env file in the server directory and add your API key.

For example:

CAT_API_KEY=YOUR_API_KEY

Starting up the App

The Client and Server both need to be started separately with command:

npm start

This will start your client on http://127.0.0.1:8080/ and backend in development mode on http://localhost:3001/, with the server listening on PORT 3001.

Features

  • View a random cat breed.
  • Add a cat to your collection.
  • Edit a cat's nickname.
  • Delete a cat from your collection.
  • Persistent storage to enable faster loading of cat images.

Tech Stack

Front-end

  • JavaScript - is a programming language that adds interactivity to your website.

  • HTML - is the standard markup language for documents designed to be displayed in a web browser.

  • CSS - is a style sheet language used for describing the presentation of a document written in HTML.

  • http-server - is a simple, zero-configuration command-line static HTTP server. It is powerful enough for production usage, but it's simple and hackable enough to be used for testing, local development and learning..

  • Jest - Jest is a delightful JavaScript Testing Framework with a focus on simplicity.

  • jsdom - is a pure-JavaScript implementation of many web standards, notably the WHATWG DOM and HTML Standards, for use with Node.js. In general, the goal of the project is to emulate enough of a subset of a web browser to be useful for testing.

Back-end

  • Node.js - Cross-platform, open-source server environment that can run on Windows, Linux, Unix, macOS, and more. Node.js is a backend JavaScript runtime environment that runs on the V8 JavaScript Engine and executes JavaScript code outside a web browser.

  • Express - Express.js, or simply Express, is a backend web application framework for building RESTful APIs with Node.js

  • The Cat API - The Cat API is a free web service providing random pictures of cats in different categories.

Testing

Testing your application is very important to ensure it is running as expected and as a user would interact with it without breaking and encountering bugs. I have set up Jest in the client, and there is a tests directory in the client directory. Simply running npm test from the client directory will run all the test files. I have includes some basic tests for the helper functions in the client/src/client/utils directory.