Smart-Calendar-backend

This is the backend for Smart Calendar Project. Johnson Zhou (owner of this repo) is primarily responsible for the backend of this CS 97 project.

Link to frontend

FYI: The full git verison control history of the frontend can be viewed in the submodule. Frontend README is here

The project website is deployed here

The tar release is here

To fully test the functionality of the backend, you will need access to our mysql database, whose credentials are stored in secrets.js. Please reach out to us if you need this secrets file.

Useful commands

• Clone this repo along with frontend submodule.

git clone --recurse-submodule https://github.com/Clumsyndicate/Smart-Calendar-backend.git

• Rebase the submodule tracked to the newest version (required before commit)

git submodule update --remote --rebase

• Deployment

Make sure you have node.js and npm installed.

cd Smart-Calendar-backend/
./build.sh  # Installs necessary packages and build frontend files

npm packages required will be installed and the React frontend will be built.

Before running the node.js program, it is required to create a secrets.js file under backend/, which is used to store mysql secrets and webtoken generation key. Here is an example secrets.js file

module.exports = {
    host: "IPADDRESS",
    user: 'MYSQLUSERNAME',
    password: 'MYSQLPASSWORD',
    database: 'DBNAME',
    insecureAuth : true,
    webtokenkey: 'SOMEKEY'
};

Now to start the node.js service.

cd backend/
npm start

or

nodemon backend/bin/www    # For easier debugging

• Deployment on server

The following deployment procedure is for CentOS, pre-installed with node version v15.1.0 and npm version 7.0.8.

git clone --recurse-submodule https://github.com/Clumsyndicate/Smart-Calendar-backend.git
cd Smart-Calendar-backend
./build.sh

Install pm2 service manager

sudo npm install pm2@latest -g
pm2 start backend/bin/www --watch

The --watch option ensures the service restarts every time the code is updated from an update. Use pm2 restart www to restart service manually and pm2 list to see the status.

The service is running on port 9000 by default, and it could be changed by setting environment variable PORT.

Frameworks

API response

• Node.js and express for server backend API.
• jwt for login tokenization
  • valid login time interval
  • authorization to private pages
• @hapi/joi for form validation

Database

• mysql for database hosting and queries

Backend integration

• Github for code hosting
• git submodule for integrating frontend code repo in backend
• Github CI worker for automatic deployment
• Travis.ci for integration testing

Server hosting

• vultr as VPS provider
• pm2 to maintain node.js service
• firewall-cmd for firewall security

Repo architecture

backend/

Holds all the backend-related codebase.

All the files and directories inside backend/

bin/www - Access point for the node.js application to start. Wraps app.js.

database - Provide mysql database-related functionalities. Simplifies querying commands.

funcs - Javascript functions that is useful for api routing functions.

middle - Middleware for verifying registration information.

schema - Schema used for registration info validation.

public - Public files served to the http endpoint. Include static files such as users' avatars.

routes - Express routes, including callbacks and middlewares, that handles users' (frontend's) requests.

app.js - Core of the application, pieces together all of the codebase, determines priorities of the middlewares and routing.

frontend/

A git submodule that links to the frontend repository. Link to frontend