Recently, I returned to a project I had started a few years ago with the hope of rebuilding the API in a more robust, clean way, while still retaining the ideas I had about the app in the first place. I wanted to work in a test driven way, focusing on making my code clean and testable. I learned so much building this API, with resources like this medium article and this article about testing being very helpful.
I wrote the API in Node using Express and MongoDB. I was already familiar with these two tools from work on BarterOut and I felt like I would be able to make the fastest progress with them. That being said I learned a lot more about how to use them well. For example, using authentication middleware with Express, decoupling the MongoDB connection script, and using .env to hide environment variables were all huge learning experiences.
I am using Mocha as my test runner and Chai to help test API endpoints. Currently, I have all of the basic functionality of the API done. Users can sign up, and then login. They can post activites, request others, approve/deny requests, see nearby events, and edit/delete their own events. After building this functionality, and making sure all my code was tested, I wanted to move on to creating promo material, the mobile app, and build/deploy structure.
I registered a domain name, and started building a promo website and designs for the mobile app. I also setup hosting and CI/CD. I am using Travis CI and Heroku for CI/CD. When I push to Github, the code is tested on Travis CI, if everything passes, then it is deployed to Heroku. The promo website is currently being deployed manually through pushing to the Heroku remote.
My next steps are designing and building the mobile app. I am currently designing in Adobe XD and learning IOS development. I hope to launch a beta version of the mobile app by September of this year. So far this process has been an incredible learning experience, especially since I am trying to build everything in the most professional way I can.
