Feedback for Racheal on Project 1 and Project 2

[tonycletus]

Feedback on Project 1: MVC with Node.js and Express

Issue #1: No views, No real Database

Firstly, your project has no views (V) which is the front end of your application. You can use popular template engines like EJS, Handlebars, or even HTML to create your views that can be rendered by the functions defined in the Controller (controller/users.js) instead of rendering plain text with res.send() function.

Secondly, the controller/users.js has the correct code because in the MVC pattern, the Controller component handles the logic for handling HTTP requests, interacting with the Model (database or data access layer), and determining the appropriate View to render.

In your project, you defined several functions (createUser, getUsers, getUser, deleteUser, and updateUser) that correspond to different routes and their associated logic. These functions are responsible for handling the HTTP requests and responses, manipulating the users data, and sending appropriate responses back to the client. In other words, the Controller receives the requests, communicates with the Model (which in your case is the users array), performs necessary operations, and returns the appropriate responses.

The Router component (router/users.js) handles the routing of incoming HTTP requests to the appropriate Controllers. It maps the routes to their corresponding functions in the Controllers, allowing the application to determine the appropriate logic to handle each request. Thumbs up on that one.

Thirdly, you should have implemented this task using a database as it makes more sense in the context of MVC.

To summarize the flow in an Express application using MVC:

1. The client makes an HTTP request to a specific endpoint handled by a Controller (route handler) in Express.
2. The Controller extracts any relevant data from the request and interacts with the Model (database) to fetch or update data.
3. The Controller renders the appropriate View, passing the retrieved data as variables.
4. The View is rendered by the server, incorporating the dynamic data provided by the Controller.
5. The server sends the rendered View (usually HTML) as a response back to the client's browser.

By separating concerns into distinct components, the MVC pattern promotes code organization, maintainability, and reusability. It helps manage complexity in larger applications by providing a clear separation between data, business logic, and presentation layers.

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Feedback on Project 2: Data Import/Export

Issue #1: No .gitignore file

• Include a .gitignore file to exclude files you don't want to push to your remote repository, for example, .hintrc, .vscode, node_modules, .env, etc.

Issue #2: Unclear Readme

• The steps provided to get started do not require step 3 and step 4 because you have already cloned a Node.js project which automatically creates the folder, and step 4 is unnecessary because it's already a Node.js project with a package.json included.

Issue #3: No dev or watch script set

• It is good practice to set your dev command in the scripts object of your package.json file so you can run npm run dev, which starts your Express server instead of node index.js. Example:

"scripts": {
  "start": "node index.js",
  "watch": "nodemon index.js"
}

Issue #4: No database file for testing

• Always export the database as an SQL file and include it in your project if you want others to test it.

Issue #5: Code in your index.js (main entry point)

• You don't need to install bodyparser which is a dependency for parsing JSON data. This is because the new version of Express comes along with a JSON method for parsing JSON. Hence, installing bodyparser is not necessary.

You can replace the app.use(bodyParser.json()); in line 13 with app.use(express.json()); without installing bodyparser.

Note: The express.json() was added to Express from version 4.16.0 to the latest. Your project is using Express version 4.18.2, which is the latest, so there's no need for bodyparser.

Issue #6: Scalability mindset

• It is not compulsory that all your routes, database config, and middleware be inside your main entry point. You can define your database config in a separate file and export your function as a module. Same with the rest configuration and middleware.

Issue #7: Incomplete task

• Your project is incomplete because users can only upload their CSV file to the database but cannot generate CSV, JSON, or Excel files from the stored data (CSV). If you want to perform some task, you can search for the dependency that will help perform that task, including the documentation on https://www.npmjs.com.

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Remarkable pointers:

1. Your code is cleaner for the small project as it is.
2. Great use of comments

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Questions:

1. Explain the getUser() in the controller/user.js.
2. What is the difference between unshift and push array method?
3. Why did you include the "type": "module" in your project?
4. Explain the flow in your uploadCsv(path) function.