NC News is a Node.js API which functions as the back-end of a web forum, serving data from a PSQL database. Data includes information regarding users, topics, articles and comments.

The NC News API can be found hosted at the following URL: https://nc-news-tcje.herokuapp.com

The front end repository associated with this project: https://github.com/tcje91/NC-NEWS-FE
The hosted front end: https://gallant-allen-1318fc.netlify.com/

The NC News API serves the following endpoints and methods:

/api

• GET: serves a JSON detailing all available endpoints and methods

/api/topics

• GET: responds with an array of topic objects
• POST: accepts body of { slug, description }, adds topic and responds with added topic object.
  Both slug and description are strings.

/topics/:topic_id/articles

• GET: responds with an array of article objects of specified topic_id. Accepts queries for: limit, p (page), sort_by and order.
  limit and p are integers. order can be asc (ascending) or desc (descending). sort_by can be one of: created_at, title, author, article_id, votes.
• POST: accepts body of { title, body, username }, adds article with specified topic_id and responds with created article object.
  title and body are strings. username must reference a pre-existing user.

/api/articles

• GET: responds with an array of article objects. Accepts queries for: limit, p (page), sort_by, order.
  limit and p are integers. order can be asc (ascending) or desc (descending). sort_by can be one of: created_at, title, author, article_id, votes, topic.

/api/articles/:article_id

• GET: responds with article object of article with specified article_id
• PATCH: accepts body of { inc_votes } where inc_votes is an integer, increments specified article vote count accordingly and responds with updated article object.
• DELETE: deletes article object of specified article_id and responds with no content.

/api/articles/:article_id/comments

• GET: responds with an array of comment objects belonging to specified article. accepts queries for: limit, p (page), sort_by and order.
  limit and p are integers. order can be asc (ascending) or desc (descending). sort_by can be one of: created_at, title, author, votes, topic, body, article_id, comment_id.
• POST: accepts body of { username, body }, adds comment to specified article and responds with comment object.
  body is a string. username must reference a pre-existing user.

/api/articles/:article_id/comments/:comment_id

• PATCH: accepts body of { inc_votes } where inc_votes is an integer, increments specified comment vote count accordingly and responds with updated comment object.
• DELETE: deletes comment object of specified comment_id and responds with no content.

/api/users

• GET: responds with an array of user objects.

/api/users/:username

• GET: responds with user object of specified username.

These instructions will get you a copy of the project up and running on your local machine for development and testing purposes.

The following must be installed on your computer before you can begin developing with this project:

• Node.js
• Node Package Manager (npm)
• git (you will also need a github account)
• PostgreSQL

Once you have installed the prerequisites, Fork this repository using the button at the top right of this page. Then, from your personal fork, click the Clone or download button, also near the top right, and copy the link to your repository.

With that done, navigate in your terminal to where you would like to install the project, then run the following command to clone a copy to your local machine:

git clone repoURL

where repoURL is the URL to your forked repository.

Now you must install the project dependencies using:

npm install

Next, you will need to create a file that stores the config information needed to access your databases. In your project folder, create a file named knexfile.js and fill it with the following:

const { DB_URL } = process.env;

module.exports = {
  development: {
    client: 'pg',
    connection: {
      username: 'username',
      password: 'password',
      database: 'nc_news',
    },
    seeds: {
      directory: './db/seed',
    },
    migrations: {
      directory: './db/migrations',
    },
  },
  test: {
    client: 'pg',
    connection: {
      username: 'username',
      password: 'password',
      database: 'nc_news_test',
    },
    seeds: {
      directory: './db/seed',
    },
    migrations: {
      directory: './db/migrations',
    },
  },
  production: {
    client: 'pg',
    connection: `${DB_URL}?ssl=true`,
    migrations: {
      directory: './db/migrations',
    },
    seeds: {
      directory: './db/seed',
    },
  },
};

Make sure to change the values of the username and password keys in both test and development to be your own PSQL username and password.

You can then create and seed the development database with the command:

npm run seed:db

The test database will automatically be created (or recreated, if it already exists), migrated and seeded upon running the test script (see below).

If you wish to manually rollback or update the database migrations, the following commands can be used:

npm run migrate:rollback
npm run migrate:latest

To start the server listening for development purposes, use:

npm run dev

By default the server listens on port 9090. This can be changed in listen.js.

You can then begin making requests to the server using, for example, Postman on the url: https://localhost:9090

To cease listening, input Ctrl+C/Cmd+C into the terminal.

To run the provided tests, enter the command:

npm test

If you wish to inspect or alter the tests, they can be found in app.spec.js in the spec directory.

The tests check that all available endpoints respond appropriately to each valid request, and produce the appropriate errors for invalid requests.

Here is an example of one of the tests:

describe('/topics', () => {
    it('GET status:200 responds with array of topic objects', () => request
      .get('/api/topics')
      .expect(200)
      .then(({ body }) => {
        expect(body.topics).be.an('array');
        expect(body.topics[0]).to.have.keys('slug', 'description');
      }));
});

The describe block contains all the tests for a given route. Generally, each it block tests a particlular method (e.g. GET) on a particular route (e.g. /api/topics). This can be achieved by chaining methods onto the end of a request. A set of conditions, laid out in the expect statements, must be met in order to pass the test. An "unexpected" result will cause the test to fail, and details of the failure will be logged in the console. In this case, the request must return a status code 200, and the response's body must be an object with key topics, which in turn has a value of an array whose elements are objects with keys slug and description.

You can use this template to design your own tests.

If you would like to deploy your own version of the API, you can use a service like Heroku.
To deploy your app on Heroku, you must first create an account, and install the Heroku Command Line Interface (CLI).

To install the CLI, run the following command:

npm install -g heroku

After creating an account and installing the CLI, follow these steps to deploy your app:

1. Ensure you are logged in by using heroku login
2. Create and name your heroku app using heroku create <app-name>
3. After commiting your latest changes using git add and git commit, you can publish your app using git push heroku master.
4. Go to the Heroku site and login. Choose your application and provide an add-on of Heroku Postgres which will provide you with a pre-created PSQL database.
5. If you click on your newly created database, then go to Settings > View Credentials you should see a URI string. Take note of this.
6. On the command line, type heroku config:get DATABASE_URL. If you're in the app's directory, and it is correctly linked as an add-on to Heroku, it should display the same DB URI string.
7. Push any remaining changes to Heroku and then view your app using heroku open. You should now see your app hosted on Heroku!
8. If you should have issues, heroku logs --tail will display logs containing any errors. Use these to debug.

• Tom Edwards - tcje91

• Mitch, for providing the inspiration for the test data
• Ant, for dealing with my many questions
• Jonny - he helped me that one time too :)
• The rest of the folks at Northcoders