“Consumers are empowered by Yelp and tools like it: before, when they had a bad experience, they didn’t have much recourse. They could fume, but often nothing else other than tell their friends. – Jeremy Stoppelman”
REST-Rant is a small create, read, update, delete (CRUD) web application using Node.js and Express.js connected to a JSON document database powered by MongoDB that lets you add restaurants and leave “rants” (reviews).
While I had the pleasure of iterating several small CRUD web apps using Node.js, I enjoyed learning the methodology behind Model-View-Controller (MVC) frameworks. I used Node.js and Express.js as the middleware, Mongoose for schema implementation, and MongoDB for data storage. Notably, the core principle of separating application logic into three parts: models, views, and controllers can be applied across many different technologies. In addition, I learned that separating concerns could make web development easy, efficient, and scalable.
For deployment, the web application is hosted by Heroku, while MongoDB Atlas hosts the database. Learning to connect these different cloud service providers was fun, and it lends itself to the scalability of the MVC architecture.
Next on the horizon is to mix in REACT for a MongoDB, Express, React, Node (MERN) stack application. I am looking to increase collaboration on this next project and am still working on several ideas with classmates. I know we want to ensure we integrate Amazon or Google APIs for the learning value. We have tied into several APIs for smaller projects, including Google Maps and Places, but have only scratched the surface of what is there. Another Milestone project provides an excellent reason to step it up.
Link to the web app: http://rest-rant-dtcr.herokuapp.com/
Link to code repository: https://github.com/DantheCodeRaider/REST-Rant