RSA - Inventory

This project is an inventory application and its main goal was to practice using Node.js Express and learn how to build an application based on the MVC architecture. This project is the first part of a larger project. The second part is the Azure chat bot.

Live version

General info

I created an app for a company called “Rafael's Stuffed Animals”. The company sells stuffed animal toys.

The app allows users to browse the entire inventory of the company or find specific items according to different categories; price, species, or size of the item. If the user is logged in to the application, they can also create or remove items from the inventory.

How I build it

As a database, I used MongoDB and Mongoose library. With the help of Mongoose, I wrote schemas and models for the different categories, items, and users. It also aided in the validation of forms when a user creates new items to the inventory or logs in to the application.

I protected user data by encrypting their personal information with hash and salt. This way, only encrypted usernames, and passwords are stored in the database. This way user data is safer if it gets accessed by outsiders.

The application is created from fully dynamic pages using Handlebars. Among other things, I created an inventoryTable.handlebars view that displays a table of items from either the entire inventory or only items from a specific category (species, price, size). The page uses handlebars variables and functions to change the view of the page.

I also learned how to use and store JSON web tokens. Token gets created when user signs or logs in and its life span is 3 days in the browser. When the server gets any request, it uses a custom middleware called requireAuth(). It checks if the token exists or not. If the token does exist, it verifies it by using env token secret and saves it to the request by the name currentUser. This way server can render different views to the client depending on if the user is logged in (token exists) or not.

function requireAuth (req, res, next) {
    const token = req.cookies.jwt;
    // Check if json web token exists and is verified
    if ( token ) {
        jwt.verify(token, process.env.JWT_SECRET, (err, decodedToken) => {
            if ( err ) {
                next()
            } else {
                req.currentUser = decodedToken.id;
                next();
            }
        })
    } else { // No token
        next()
    }
}

Bot

With the help of this project, I also practiced building Azure chat bot. I made two pages for the project; RSA - homepage and RSA - inventory. The idea was to build a bot that will appear on the homepage. Through the bot, the user could view and retrieve individual items from the inventory, delete them, or add new ones. To do this, I made a REST api, which the bot will contact and through which calls will be made to the database. In addition to this, the bot would be able to tell general information about the company (mock data), would be able to tell jokes and greet the users.

Learn more about the bot here

Technologies

• Node.js & Express
  • router
  • form validation
  • error handling
  • custom middleware
• Handlebars
  • variables, build in and custom functions
• MVC architecture
• CRUD
• MongoDB & Mongoose
• Environmental variables
• Heroku
• json web tokens
• Bootstrap
• CSS
  • Building app mobile first