This was part of week 19 in the Technigo bootcamp. I've created an API with GET, POST, DELETE and PUT endpoints to be part of the FrontEnd project Happy Thoughts from week 11.
Main learning objectives:
- To build an API that handles user input
- Include error handling in order to return good validation errors to the frontend
- Building an API which works well with an existing frontend
Set-up: Express API with a MongoDB stored in Atlas and deployed to Heroku. Using Mongoose for creating endpoints and updating the data.
The API has the following endpoints
| METHOD | Path | Description |
|---|---|---|
| https://caroline-happy-thoughts-api.herokuapp.com/ | Welcome page - contains a list of available routes | |
| GET | /thoughts | Endpoint that returns 20 thoughts, sorted by createdAt to show the most recent thoughts first. |
| POST | /thoughts | POST a new thought |
| POST | thoughts/:id/like | Update like/heart property on a thought object |
| DELETE | /thoughts/:id | Delete a thought |
| PUT | /thoughts/:id | Update thought object by id |
- MongoDB
- Mongoose
- Node
- Express
- JavaScript
- Heroku
- MongoDB Atlas & Compass
- Postman
It was a useful exercise to see that I sent in data in another format than the frontend expected when I first created the endpoints, and then it was a quick fix. I've added the possibility to add an author in the backend and hence added that in the frontend too. I enjoyed connecting back- and frontend for the first time this week, although I am not a hundred that everything has landed yet.
If I had more time I would continue to experiement with features that created a virtual "contract" between the frontend and the backend such as pagination, or experiment with infinite scrolling on the frontend part.
Backend: https://caroline-happy-thoughts-api.herokuapp.com/ FrontEnd: https://caro-happy-thoughts.netlify.app/