Blog App

Description

Blog App is a web application designed for creating, managing, and viewing blog posts. It leverages Node.js and Express for the backend, MongoDB for data storage, and EJS for templating views. This application is structured to be simple, yet flexible enough to extend for additional features in the future.

Features

• User authentication using bcrypt and jsonwebtoken.
• Blog Management create, read, updated and delete
• Session management with express-session and connect-mongo.
• Server-side templating using EJS and express-ejs-layouts.
• Environment variable management with dotenv.
• Middleware for advanced HTTP request handling using method-override.
• Cookie parsing for handling cookies with cookie-parser.

Getting Started

Prerequisites

Ensure you have the following installed on your system:

• Node.js (v16 or higher recommended)
• MongoDB

Installation

1. Clone the repository:

   git clone https://github.com/iamfrerot/blog-app.git

2. Navigate to the project directory:

   cd blog-app

3. Install the dependencies:

   npm install

4. Create a .env file in the project root directory and configure the required environment variables:

   PORT=3000
   MONGO_URI=your-mongodb-connection-string
   JWT_SECRET=your-jwt-secret
   SESSION_SECRET=your-session-secret

Running the Application

• To start the application in production mode:

  npm start

• To run the application in development mode with live-reloading:

  npm run dev

The application will be accessible at http://localhost:3000.

Scripts

• npm start: Starts the application.
• npm run dev: Starts the application in development mode with nodemon.
• npm test: Placeholder for test scripts.

Project Structure

blog-app/
├── app.js             # Main application entry point
├── views/             # EJS templates
├── server/            # Application routes, db config and models
├── public/            # Static files (CSS, JS, images)
├── .env               # Environment variables
├── .gitignore         # ignore enviroment variables
├── package.json       # Project metadata and dependencies
└── README.md          # Project documentation

Dependencies

Main Dependencies

• bcrypt: For hashing passwords.
• connect-mongo: MongoDB session store for express-session.
• cookie-parser: Parses cookies in requests.
• dotenv: Loads environment variables from a .env file.
• ejs: Embedded JavaScript templating.
• express: Web framework for Node.js.
• express-ejs-layouts: Layout support for EJS templates.
• express-session: Session middleware for Express.
• jsonwebtoken: For generating and verifying JSON Web Tokens.
• method-override: Enables support for HTTP methods like PUT and DELETE.
• mongoose: MongoDB object modeling tool.

Development Dependencies

• nodemon: Utility for auto-restarting the application during development.