MG Rewards

Web service for adding and spending rewards points in user account.

About

This project was created as an exercise to practice Test-Driven Development (TDD) and to review foundational concepts of a REST API. I took the opportunity to set this project up from scratch in order to learn more about the role of Express in backend development. It was also the first time I assembled documentation using Swagger as I needed an interface to present my API.

Technologies Used

• Node.js - v14.17.0
• Express - v4.17.2
• SQLite3 - v5.0.2
• Sequelize - v6.15.0
• Jest - v27.4.7

Notes:
I picked SQLite as the database for this project because I found out about in-memory databases only recently and I wanted to try using one. SQLite is prototype friendly and easy to set up. However, SQLite doesn't seem to be deployment friendly.

Features

• Transactions can be added for points
• Points can be spent
• Get remaining points balance

Project Preview

MG Rewards API - Watch Video

Setup

Setup for project on local environment:

• You will need node and npm installed globally on your machine.
• Git fork this repository into your desired directory. [forking guide]

Install dependencies:

npm install

Start local server:

npm start

• Open http://localhost:3000/api-docs/#/ in your browser to access api docs.
• Nodemon will watch for any changes in the files

Run tests:

npm test

• Jest will watch for any changes in the files

Notes:

• Make sure your Node version is at least version 14.
• Please note swagger-jsdoc is using v6.0.0 in this project. Other versions are not guaranteed to work.

Room for Improvement

Room for improvement:

• missing validation and error handling inside routes

• could have better error handling endware for routes

• more thorough tests that handle edge cases and invalid inputs

• better interfacing between route and resources

  e.g rename /api/transactions/{payer} ---> /api/transactions/add

To do:

• research best practices for REST Architecture
• research some ways to deploy projects with SQLite

Acknowledgements

Tutorials used for this project:

• Rest application with Node JS Express & Sequelize & SQLite
• Test Driven Development - TDD with Node js Express
• Document an Express API with Swagger UI and JSDoc
• Splitting your swagger spec into multiple files in a Node project
• How to write a good README for your GitHub project?