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Jacobs App Server

This server consists of a MySQL database and a Node & Express backend. The project is written in TypeScript, as is the Jacobs web application. The server provides a RESTful API for database access.

Local Development Setup

MySQL database

Start by installing mysql, either directly (from here: mac, linux), or using an app such as MAMP (download) and then run the mysql database server.

Login to the mysql server (on localhost) and run the following script:

mysql> source ./src/tools/create_db.sql;

This will setup a database called JacobsApp with all the necessary tables.

If you ever need to reset the database, run the following inside your mysql environment:

mysql> drop database JacobsApp;
mysql> source ./src/tools/create_db.sql

Node Server

You will need to install npm and node for this server.

First of all, run

npm install

to install all necessary packages.

Now, run

npm run watch-ts

for the compilation in watch mode - this will show you any errors/warnings at compile time.

Also run

npm run watch-node

to actually run the API server.

Postman

In order to test API endpoints, it's very convenient to have an application that helps you make these requests. You can just do the requests using curl on the command line, but apps such as Postman will make your life much easier. Download Postman here for free.

Project Structure

The project directory has the following structure:

dist
	...
node_modules
	...
src
	routes
		...
	tools
		...
	server.ts
package-lock.json
package.json
README.md
tsconfig.json
tslint.json

The directory dist contains the compiled JavaScript files from the project - you don't write to this folder and it's not committed to Git. The directory node_modules contains all the installed modules for the Node environment - you don't write to this folder either and it's not committed to Git either.

The src directory is where we work. src/routes contains files for each API resource endpoint (such as users.ts, chats.ts and so on). src/tools contains other tools, such as SQL scripts and the database worker src/tools/db.ts. The file src/server.ts has the general server setup - it registers all the routes from src/routes and starts the server.

The package-lock.json and package.json files contain information about all the node packages for this project. You usually don't modify these files and they are committed to Git. The README.md file is what you're reading right now (duh), the tsconfig.json file contains TypeScript configurations and tslint.json sets up Lint for the project.

API Structure

You can find a detailed overview of all API endpoints that are needed in the wiki pages of the app project here (there, you can also find a detailed overview of the MySQL database).

We use the RESTful API verbs from standard HTTP requests (GET for getting data, POST for uploading data, PUT for updating data and DELETE for deleting data) in all API endpoints.

The general API structure is to use URIs starting with /api/v1/, following with the resource name (e.g. /api/v1/users).

For each API end point, we check the incoming request, make sure it's valid (assert that all necessary data is in the query and, if applicable, make sure that the user making the request has the authentication to access this API endpoint), run the SQL query and return data (if no data is returned, just return a 200 OK status code).

Make sure to make use of relevant HTTP status codes - and be as detailed as possible.