Virtual Technical Help Application (Backend)

This is the Server side of a technical support application. This app is built to connect micronauts (microverse students) who may need technical help to Technical Support Engineers, using microverse (an online training school for remote software developers) as a case study. The client-side implementation can be found here

Built With

• Ruby v2.7.1
• Ruby on Rails 7.0.2.1
• Rspec
• JWT
• Heroku

Core Functionalities

• User authentication: allows new user to register and existing users to login.
• Fetch all Engineers: enables users to view available engineers and their individual details.
• Fetch all Appointments: enables users to view existing appointments, both past and future.
• Create new appointment: allows users to book a new appointment.

Getting Started

To get a local copy up and running follow these simple example steps.

• On the project GitHub page, navigate to the main page of the repository this page.
• Under the repository name, locate and click on a green button named Code.
• Copy the project URL as displayed.
• If you're running Windows Operating System, open your command prompt. On Linux, Open your terminal.
• Change the current working directory to the location where you want the cloned directory to be made. Leave as it is if the current location is where you want the project to be.
• Type git clone, and then paste the URL you copied in Step 3.
  $ git clone https://github.com/teekaytech/Virtual-Technical-Help-App-Frontend.git Press Enter key
  
• Press Enter. Your local copy will be created.

Prerequisites

• Git.
• Web browser (Chrome/Firefox)
• Node
• NPM
• Ruby v2.7.1
• Ruby on Rails v7
• Postgresql v >= 9.5

Project Setup

After cloning, the following steps setup the project

• cd technical-help-backend to change the current working directory.

• git checkout development to access the most recent files and features.

• bundle install to install all necessary dependencies.

• rails db:create && rails db:migrate to create database and tables.

• rails db:seed to populate database with Dummie data.

• touch .env to create an env file. This requires two(2) keys namely: JWT_TOKEN & SECRET_KEY_BASE. JWT_TOKEN can be set to whatever you desire, while SECRET_KEY_BASE value can be generated with: rake secret.

  JWT_TOKEN=<<whatever>>
  SECRET_KEY_BASE=<<code generated from 'rake secret' command>>
  

• rails s to start the application. You're all set. Feel free to use POSTMAN or any other similar infrastructure to test the different endpoints.

  To run test suites included, run:

• bundle exec rspec

API Documentation

The base URL for all endpoints is https://boiling-basin-10755.herokuapp.com/api/v1/. Some requests requires validation while some does not. The validation is implemented using tokens generated by JWT upon registration or login. This token is then sent with the headers of the requests that requires validation, so that it can be decoded and the app can determine if the token is valid or not. If valid, the user can successfully access such end-points that requires authentication.

Summary of Available API Endpoints

Endpoint	Feature	Authentication
POST /users	Registers a new user	False
POST /login	Logs in a user	False
GET /auto_login	Checks login status of the current user	True
POST /appointments	Creates a new appointment	True
GET /appointments	Fetches all available appointment for logged user	True
GET /engineers	Fetches all available engineers	False
GET /engineers/:id	Fetches the details of a specific engineer	False
DELETE /logout	Logs out a user	False

Sampling a request that requires authentication

Fetch Appointments: endpoint fetches all the appointments already booked by the logged in user. Therefore, it requires authorization.

Endpoint: https://boiling-basin-10755.herokuapp.com/api/v1/appointments

Request (from POSTMAN):

token = 'eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJ1c2VyX2lkIjoxfQ.JC6qKuH9SG0SIiYSfhZUFTtirxN9Q47buLk0DPFFFzE'
curl --location --request GET 'https://boiling-basin-10755.herokuapp.com/api/v1/appointments' \
--header 'Authorization: Bearer <token>' \

Response:

[
  {
    "date_created": "2020-12-08T11:14:06.414Z",
    "id": 6,
    "date": "2020-12-09T13:15:00.000Z",
    "status": "Upcoming",
    "duration": "90",
    "engineer": "Boris Simonis",
    "location": "Cyprus"
  }
]

Sampling a request that DOES NOT require authentication

Login: endpoint fetches creates a new token and ensure that the user can access all features.

Endpoint: https://boiling-basin-10755.herokuapp.com/api/v1/login

Request (From POSTMAN):

curl --location --request POST 'https://boiling-basin-10755.herokuapp.com/api/v1/login' \
--form 'username="johndoe"' \
--form 'password="password"'

Response:

{
  "user": {
    "id": 1,
    "name": "John Doe",
    "username": "johndoe",
    "email": "john@doe.com"
  },
  "token": "eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJ1c2VyX2lkIjoxfQ.JC6qKuH9SG0SIiYSfhZUFTtirxN9Q47buLk0DPFFFzE",
  "logged_in": true
}

Deployment

This app was deployed to Heroku and is accessible at: https://boiling-basin-10755.herokuapp.com

Author

👤 Taofeek Olalere

• Github: @teekaytech
• Twitter: @ola_lere
• Linkedin: olaleretaofeek
• Portfolio: Olalere Taofeek

🤝 Contributing

Contributions, issues and feature requests are welcome!

Feel free to check the issues page.

Show your support

Give a ⭐️ if you like this project!

Acknowledgments

• Microverse
• Reinald Reynoso's articles medium
• Images stored with Cloudinary

📝 License

This project is MIT licensed.