NoSQL - Social Media API (Back-end only)

Description

MongoDB is a popular choice for many social networks due to its speed with large amounts of data and flexibility with unstructured data. For a practice challenge, I used several of the technologies that social networking platforms use in their full-stack applications. Because the foundation of these applications is data, it’s important that you understand how to build and structure the API first.

My challenge was to build an API for a social network web application where users can share their thoughts, react to friends’ thoughts, and create a friend list. I used Express.js for routing, a MongoDB database, and the Mongoose ODM.

No seed data is provided, so I needed to create my own data using Postman after I created my API.

Table of Contents

1. Technologies
2. Challenges
3. Future Implementations
4. User Story
5. Demonstration
6. Installation
7. License

Technologies

• nodejs - to run the server in the terminal
• MongoDB - database management
• dotenv - to hide sensitive user data
• mongoose - Database modeling/queries/etc
• Postman - In-app CRUD operations on API requests
• moment - utility for date/time formatting

Challenges

• Learning MongoDB / Mongoose
• Syncing up controllers and routers
• Best practices for readability

Future Implementation

• Front-End implementation
• Emoji-based reactions

User Story

AS A social media startup
I WANT an API for my social network that uses a NoSQL database
SO THAT my website can handle large amounts of unstructured data

Demonstration

Here is a video link of the app in action

Installation

• For installation onto local machine, clone provided repository.
• Use npm init to initalize node package manager
• Use npm install or npm i to install dependencies
• For development purposes, use npm run dev, found in the scripts to work with nodemon.

License

MIT © Krenbot