What To Say Now

This project encompasses the 5-week coach's challenge for What To Say Now, an initiative by WithAll. This version uses React, Redux, Express, Passport, and PostgreSQL (a full list of dependencies can be found in package.json).

Prerequisites

Before you get started, make sure you have the following software installed on your computer:

• Node.js
• PostrgeSQL
• Nodemon

Create database and table

Create a new database called what_to_say_now and follow the instructions in database.sql.

Development Setup Instructions

• Run npm install
• Create a .env file at the root of the project and paste this line into the file:

  SERVER_SESSION_SECRET=superDuperSecret
  

  While you're in your new .env file, take the time to replace superDuperSecret with some long random string like 25POUbVtx6RKVNWszd9ERB9Bb6 to keep your application secure. Here's a site that can help you: https://passwordsgenerator.net/. If you don't do this step, create a secret with less than eight characters, or leave it as superDuperSecret, you will get a warning.
• Start postgres if not running already by using brew services start postgresql
• Run npm run server
• Run npm run client
• Navigate to localhost:3000

Testing Routes with Postman

To use Postman with this repo, you will need to set up requests in Postman to register a user and login a user at a minimum.

Keep in mind that once you using the login route, Postman will manage your session cookie for you just like a browser, ensuring it is sent with each subsequent request. If you delete the localhost cookie in Postman, it will effectively log you out.

1. Start the server - npm run server
2. Import the sample routes JSON file by clicking Import in Passport. Select the file.
3. Click Collections and Send the following three calls in order:
   1. POST /api/user/register registers a new user, see body to change username/password
   2. POST /api/user/login will login a user, see body to change username/password
   3. GET /api/user will get user information, by default it's not very much

After running the login route above, you can try any other route you've created that requires a logged in user!

Deployment

We used Heroku to deploy this project.

1. Create a new Heroku project
2. Link the Heroku project to the project GitHub Repo
3. Create an Heroku Postgres database
4. Connect to the Heroku Postgres database from Postico
5. Create the necessary tables
6. Add an environment variable for SERVER_SESSION_SECRET with a nice random string for security
7. In the deploy section, select manual deploy

Built With

• React
• Redux
• Redux Saga
• node-cron
• react-chartjs-2
• Twilio
• NodeMailer

Lay of the Land

• src/ contains the React application, reducers, and Redux Sagas
• public/ contains static assets for the client-side
• build/ after you build the project, contains the transpiled code from src/ and public/ that will be viewed on the production site
• server/ contains the Express App

This code is also heavily commented. We recommend reading through the comments, getting a lay of the land, and becoming comfortable with how the code works before you start making too many changes.

Authors

• Trevor Ramlow - trevaftw
• Paul Molnar - jpaul1982
• Kellen Baker - mkbaker
• Kibret Gebremedhin - kibretg