HabitatApi (a Node JS + Express JS backend)

Instructions to run API

1. Navigate to HabitatAPI folder in vim or in your IDE. (Must have Node.JS Installed)

2. Once in the folder, type "npm run run"

3. A message should appear in the console alerting you to where it is running (localhost:3000).

4. Click the address to see what it returns, and go to the other routes to see what they do.

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Using the API

1. Right now we have 2 get routes and 2 POST routes.

2. Right now you can both GET and POST to /observations.

GETing from /observations will display all obervations in DB

POSTing to /observations will add a generic observation to DB (overwriting the one that was there)

3. Accessible at '/locTest', there is a GET route used to test displaying points on the app's homescreen. It sends an array of {lattitude:x, longitude:y} coordinates.

4. To create a table you can send a blank POST to /maketable. (This should not be used after the table has been made once.)

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Using the Database

1. Make sure you have a containter of Amazon's Dynamo DB, and that it has port info

2. Run the Container

3. Run the API

4. Run an empty POST request to /maketable to create the table within Dynamo

You should get "Table Created Successfully" as a return message if it works.

All post requests and many gets will fail unless the table is instantiated first

5. Run a get request (via creating an observation in the app) through the app to "/observations" to add an observation to the database

6. When the app starts up it should pull all currently stored in the databse, "API HIT" will come up in the back end console when it hits