Air Quality App

https://air-quality-data-app.herokuapp.com/

Designed and implemented an app that allows users to see current air quality in San Francisco Area.

Integrated with AirNow API for displaying most recent data.

Tech:

Deployed Version:

• AirNow API,
• MongoDB,
• Express,
• Node,
• HTML / CSS,
• Particles.js

Currently in progress:

• AirNow API,
• MongoDB,
• Express,
• React
• Node,
• HTML / CSS,
• Lodash
• Particles.js

Decicions made:

• Create server:
  • For being able to store my api key I decided to create a server that proxies the request to the original server. I also added a cron like task scheduler for grabbing the recent information and storing it to the database.
• Use upsert: instead of iterating over records and see if a record already exists, I decided to use MongoDB upsert. Method will update a record if already exists, otherwise create a new record.

db.AirQuality.updateOne({ ReportingArea: newDBRecord.ReportingArea }, newDBRecord, { upsert: true }, (err, updatedRecord) => {
  if (err) {
    return console.log(err);
  }
  res.status(200).json({ status: 200, message: 'instance created', recordupdatedRecord })
})

• Use node HTTPS module in the standard library: too many external modules increase a chance of bugs. I decided to explore native node methods.

app.get('/link', (req, res) => {
  const options = {
    //hostname, path and type of the request
  };

  const request = https.request(options, resp => {
    let dataStr = "";

    resp.on('data', d => {
      //store chunk of data into a string variable
    });

    resp.on('end', () => {
      //create db instance and send status
    });
  });

  request.on('error', error => {
    //handle error
  });

  request.end();
});

Alternative tried - axios.

• Use particles.js: I really liked this lightweight JavaScript library for creating particles. It is a very user friendly library that helps to achieve a great result.

Link

https://air-quality-data-app.herokuapp.com/

Next plans:

• Add more cities.
• Switch to React for reusing the same components.