asteroid-tracker's Introduction

Asteroid Tracker

This Web API allows users to search NASA's database for objects close to Earth's orbit.

Getting started

Clone or fork the repository.
Set the environment variable NASA_KEY with your NASA API key.
Run yarn
Make sure that MongoDB is installed and the server is running.
- You can optionally set the environment variable MONGO_PORT to whichever port your Mongo server is listening. The default is 27017.
Seed the database with data from NASA's API by running npm run fetch_neos.
Start the server with npm run serve.
Run the tests with npm test.

Express
- The choice of Express for a simple, lightweight API server felt natural.
- The un-opinionated and tabula-rasa-oriented approach of the node server presents a good opportunity to demonstrate my own sense of application structure.
- The combination of server-side Javascript with MongoDB's BSON brings with it a certain feeling of consistency.
- I had been trained in Express, but it had been a while since I had worked with it. I wanted to take an opportunity to revisit the framework.
MongoDB
- MongoDB's ability to store and work with a variety of data types makes it a beneficial tool for the assignment. Mongo's abilities to perform bulk writes and aggregates were particularly useful in saving API data and grouping asteroids by date.
Mongoose
- I included this ORM for simple document validations and for better code maintainability through built-in CRUD-related methods.
Mocha with Chai
- Testing is always essential, and these are two proven tools.
- Chai provides useful tools for acceptance testing in addition to its human-readable syntax.

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