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Serverlet

Overview​

The serverlet application serves as the interface (API) exposing the application data from the database via well-defined syntax, requests and semantics termed as API routes.

The serverlet application depends on the representational state transfer (REST) architecture to serve client requests to the underlying data based on the HTTP request/response protocol. As a user makes a request to a specific endpoint of the serverlet, an SQL query is run to fetch/modify data in the database to respond with a specific response with a specific HTTP status code.

Technology stack:​

  1. Express 1
  2. PostgreSQL 2
  3. Prisma ORM
  4. Node.Js 1
  5. Firebase Admin SDK

Understanding the complex and well-coupled nature of the data, a structured relational database was choosed for CHITTI. and hence, the free tier offerring of PostgreSQL by Supabase has been used in this project.

To manage the complexity of the project and the suprisingly different syntax of SQL, Prisma, an object relation manager is employed to allow writing of custom models, and handle transactions with ease in javascript using objects and methods.

Few endpoints are secured with the token based authentication provided by Firebase Auth, to ensure authorization before processing the request and more about it can be read here.

Hosting​

  1. Firebase 3 Functions
    The servelet application is written as a specialized non-preemptive application hosted over the Firebase 3 Function offerring in the free tier.
  2. Supabase 4
    The SQL offerring of the supabase is used to host the database for the entire application which is connected using the pooling and connection url using Prisma as the ORM.

Setup​

The entry point to the code is available at functions/src/index.ts.
The prisma schema is available at functions/prisma/prisma.schema.

Repository​

URL: https://github.com/theananta/chitti-server

Steps to run​

To run the client application:

  1. Clone the repository.
  2. Run npm run serve to emulate the Firebase Functions locally.
  3. Run npm run deploy to deploy the project to the Firebase SDK, which interally run npm run lint before deploying.

Next Steps​

To know more about database schemas/models, checkout the schema references available here.

To know more about the different APIs exposed through the serverlet, and their paramters, checkout the API references available here.

References​

1. Node.Js and Express are projects of the OpenJS Foundation. This is a statement of the OpenJS Foundation’s trademarks and its policy and guidelines relating to use of trademarks owned by the OpenJS Foundation and used by projects under the OpenJS Foundation.

2. Postgres, PostgreSQL and the Slonik Logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of the PostgreSQL Community Association of Canada.

3. The "Firebase" name and logo are trademarks owned by Google.

4. All Supabase trademarks, logos, or other brand elements can never be modified or used for any other purpose other than to represent Supabase Inc.