I created this project as part of the Manchester Codes software engineering course. The objective was to learn about creating a CRUD API using Express.js and Sequelize.
The API has access to Reader, Book, Genre, and Author tables. Users (Readers) are able to create an entry for themselves and associate books with their account. Genre and Author information is kept in seperate but associated tables, allowing users to search the database by genre or author. There is also password authentification, and after a user creates a password it is hidden in the API, and other users are not able to access it.
This project is currently backend only, I may add a frontend in the future, or repurpose it into another project.
The project uses JavaScript, Express.js, Node.js, and Sequelize. Testing is done using Chai, Supertest, and Mocha.
Download and initial setup:
- Fork the project repository
- Get the project link, navigate to the local folder where the project should be installed, and run
git clone - Switch to the newly installed project folder and run
npm install - Use command
npm testto run the test suite
The database environment variables are of not in the github repository. To setup environment variables locally, create '.env' and '.env.test' files at root level in the project directory. The variables then need to filled entered and filled in for both '.env' and '.env.test' files to connect to a database:
DB_PASSWORD= //enter password DB_NAME= //enter database name, or test database name DB_USER= // enter database user type DB_HOST=localhost DB_PORT= //enter port PORT= //enter port
The Book Library project does not currently have a GUI and can be run locally. For development, a database connection was setup by running a docker container, and nodemon was used to run a server locally. If the environment variables are setup, it can be used to connect to any database run locally.
When the project is setup locally, HTTP requests can be used to for Author, Genre, Book and Reader records to:
- create an item
- get a list of all the items in the table
- get an item by ID
- update an item
- delete an item
Requests need to be sent in JSON format, and for examples see the test suite for the relevant table.
As Author and Genre are associated with the Book table, queries to get a book item / list of book items will also show artist and genre tables.
Testing is completed using Chai, Supertest, and Mocha test libraries. The project has a pre-test and post-test script which creates and then drops the test environment database before and after each run of the test suite.
The validation error handling is abstracted to the '../src/controllers/helper-fn-validation-error-handling.js' file. This keeps the validation and constraint error messages in one place, and the custom messages make the API more secure and keep the fact that Sequelize / MySQL is used hidden.
The main objective of this project was to learn about using Sequelize in a CRUD Express.js API.
If I was to develop this project further I would:
- Add a GUI to make user interaction easier.
- Add features to improve the user experience:
- Functionality so that users do not have to find the id number for genre / author first when adding a 'book' entry
- When searching by genre / author, currently it will include the book association. Within the book entries the genre / author is listed by id only- it would be better if users could see all the details of each book in one go.
- Need to add validation & constraints to make sure users add a GenreId and AuthorId when creating a book entry.
- Improve reader authentification - e.g. have a password recovery process via email
- Write routes and controllers to make it easer for readers 'borrow' books from other readers
Further improvements to project design would include:
- Tests:
- Refactoring tests to reduce repetition
- Genre and Author test suites need tests adding to check Book associations are being returned for read and read by id api queries
- Make testing more thorough by randomising test data (e.g. using faker.js)
Agnes Beviz