Collection.API

An API for handling CRUD requests to a NoSQL database, built for managing a collection.

Overview

This is an API that is meant to sit between a front end and NoSQL DB (in my case an Azure DocumentDB with the MongoDB protocol). Its intention is to allow for the management of a collection of Movies/Games/Books, etc.

Setup

This API requires a NoSQL database backing it in order to function. I used an Azure DocumentDB, picking the MongoDB API option during the setup process, after the DB has been provisioned, you will need the connection string from the Properties pane in Azure.

Go to the root folder of the Repo and create a file called "AppSettingsSecrets.config" and in here you should put the following configuration:

<appSettings>
  <add key="MongoDbCollection" value="{Name of collection}"/>
  <add key="MongoDbConnection" value="{Connection string}"/>
</appSettings>

This will ensure that the API will connect to your Azure DB without storing the connection details in the Web.config file.

When publishing this API to Azure, you can then add these AppSettings into the live app by following this: AppSettings and Connection Strings in Azure

Current Status

The API currently supports Movie, Book, Album, and Video Game collections that run through generic DataService and DataRepository classes, this allows the API to be easily expanded to support more data models if needs be, there is also a generic controller that handles all the logic, each controller for the collections is a simple shell that handles only the routing. There is currently one major limitation: the PATCH route through the API only supports flat data models. The PATCH route has been replaced with a PUT route to handle more comlex models for the time being

The API also doesn't support any sort of advanced search

Routing

HTTPCommand	Route	Description	Returns
GET	/api/v1/[controller]/	Gets all from specified collection	[controller]ViewModel
GET	/api/v1/[controller]/{id}	Gets specific item from collection	[controller]DetailViewModel
POST	/api/v1/[controller]/	Posts new item(s) to collection, accepts array of [controller]Model to insert	HttpActionResult
PATCH	/api/v1/[controller]/{id}	Patches specified item from collection, accepts new item in JSON body	HttpActionResult
PUT	/api/v1/[controller]/{id}	Puts specified item from collection, accepts new item in JSON body	HttpActionResult
DELETE	/api/v1/[controller]/	Deletes specified item(s) from collection, accepts array of Ids to delete	HttpActionResult

To-Do

• Unit tests
• Advanced Search capabilities
• Support for more complex models