dart_news_api

This repository contains a simple Dart backend that interacts with a public news API for fetching articles.

Project structure

/news_server
    - /lib: Server code not related to routing (e.g. repository, models, utilities)
    - /openapi: openapi spec and generated documentation in Markdown format.
    - /packages: Dart packages that have functionality external to the server (e.g. GNews API client)
    - /routes: Controllers and middleware for API routing.
    - /tests: All tests for the server.

API limit

This app uses the free tier of the GNews API with a daily quota of 100 calls. Basic caching of calls to the GNews API is implemented.

As well, the free tier of the GNews API only returns a small part of the beginning of the article instead of the full article content.

API features

• Fetch top news articles (can filter fetch count up to 10)
• Search for news articles by keyword
  • Can additionally filter keyword searches by country
• Articles have a metadata object which currently includes word frequency and character count.

API documentation

The API is documented with a YAML openapi spec. Generated markdown docs can be found here.

Running the project

Install the Dart SDK on your machine.

A Dart version of >=2.17.0 <3.0.0 is required.

dart --version
Dart SDK version: 2.18.2 (stable) (Tue Sep 27 13:24:11 2022 +0200) on "macos_x64"

This project uses the dart_frog server framework. To install:

dart pub global activate dart_frog_cli

An API key for GNews is required to fetch articles. Once an API key is acquired, create a .env file in the root folder of this app:

cd /path/to/dart_news_api

.env:

GNEWS_API_KEY={your_api_key_here}

To run the server (specifying port is optional and will default to 8080):

cd /path/to/dart_news_api
dart pub get
dart_frog dev --port 8080
✓ Running on http://localhost:8080 (3.4s)
The Dart VM service is listening on http://127.0.0.1:8181/1U6MVRzgf6I=/
The Dart DevTools debugger and profiler is available at: http://127.0.0.1:8181/1U6MVRzgf6I=/devtools/#/?uri=ws%3A%2F%2F127.0.0.1%3A8181%2F1U6MVRzgf6I%3D%2Fws
[hotreload] Hot reload is enabled.

Hot reload is enabled on the dev server. Modifying and saving a file while the server is running will reload the app with the changes.

Running tests

NOTE: Code is not 100% covered, but has basic tests. The tests implemented show how further coverage can be added, both in the dart_frog specific routing code and in the plain Dart code.

cd /path/to/dart_news_api
dart pub get
dart test

Creating a production build

# Ensure you have Dart and the dart_frog_cli package installed
cd /path/to/dart_news_api
dart pub get
dart_frog build

A Dockerfile will be generated in the build folder. To more info on deploying the server, see the dart_frog documentation.

Regenerating server models

This app uses freezed and build_runner to generate models and json converters. To regenerate the models:

dart run build_runner build --delete-conflicting-outputs

Regenerating openapi documentation

Install the openapi-generator-cli and run the following:

cd /path/to/dart_news_api
openapi-generator-cli generate -i openapi.yaml -o ./generated -g markdown