topics.md

The last weeks of back-end (team project) you'll pick (at minimum, but you can do multiple for a higher grade) 1 topic to work on for the team assessment. So apart from 'just' building the application and making a coherent application from all the individual features you do a deep dive in one topic related to back-end. These topics range from security enhancements, application structure to performance optimizations.

So we give you a starting point but you do your own research. In A2 you show the code of the topic; implementation but also the research in your wiki.

• We assess the quality of the code of the topic, how complex it is? What of the topics did you implement?
• We also look at the research were you document your research. What sources, articles etc. did you read? Did you explain your topic in your own words? Can you offer alternatives?

Topic

Think about a back-end related topic you'll want to work on during the team project. Maybe there is something special you wanted to implement in your individual feature. Or you read an article while you were working on your feature and found something interesting but didn't have the time to implement yet.

🚨 Pick a topic that isn't already implemented. So pick something you haven't worked on already and also refrain from picking topics that are already part of other courses (e.g. deployment from project-tech). Also make sure each team member has a different topic, divide and conquer!

Inspiration

If you're not sure what to work on. Here are topics we as teachers came up with. We prefer if you come up with your own topic and learn something you always wanted to learn related to back-end. If you're not sure or don't know where to start, feel free to look at this list for inspiration.

Production

#1 - Build and structure your node.js application (MVC Model)
Work on the 'architecture' of your application. In node.js applications we often use the MVC model (model, view, controller). You can for example split up your route logic into seperate modules.

#2 - Compress assets that get send to the client
With compression (such as gzip) you can greatly decrease the size of the response body and hence increase the speed of a web app. There are many packages for express available that offer middleware for compression algorithms.

#3 - Minify assets that get send to the client
Set-up a small build chain that minifies code that get sends to the client. For example you can use UglifyJS or CSSNano to minify JavaScript or CSS.

#4 - Work on proper error handling
Learn about how to handle errors in a Node Project and implement those. There is lots of resources online on error handling in node (error object, try / catch, throw, promises). Look where error-handling is especially usefull in your application (submitting forms for example).

#5 - Pre-processors and Post Processors
You can use node.js to build an 'asset pipeline'. Have a look at some preprocessors like sass, postcss or anything similar and implement those into the team project.

#6 - Bundlers
Have a look at some of the popular bundlers. Maybe you'll want to write your own webpack config or tinker around with more complicated build scripts. Maybe rollup is something you'll want to implement in the project.

Security

#7 - Use a combination of helmet to set HTTP Headers, rate-limiter to protect against brute-force attacks and password hashing to secure your matching application.

Helmet can help protect your app from some well-known web vulnerabilities by setting HTTP headers appropriately. Rate-limiting prevents brute forcing. For example you can limit how many times a user can try to login in a given time window. Password hashing transform the text passwords into a string of fixed length using a hash function (similar to encryption). It is a common practice to store passwords as Hash Value in the database and not in Plain Text

API's

#8 - Fetch a public external API from the server and render that data
You can find a public API related to the concept of your application and fetch() data. For example loading image data to show game covers, profile pictures etc.

#9 - Fetch an external API from the server that requires OAUTH and render that data
This is practically the same topic as the above but instead of calling a 'public' API you can call a API that has some form of authentication. So the fetching of the data will be more complex but since the user is logged into you can ask for more specific data.

#10 - Send registration e-mails with Node-mailer
You can use node-mailer to send e-mails to users. For example, when they are trying to log in.

Testing

#11 - Implement Continous Integration (deployment)
As your application becomes 'larger' it's common to add an extra build step to your application usually to automatically build and testing code changes, providing immediate feedback on the success of the change. Travis CI can be a good starting point.

#12 - Implement Unit Testing
As your application becomes 'larger' it's common to add an extra testing step. Basically unit testing is checking that a function by itself, separate from everything around, should do what it is intended to do. Mocha (a JavaScript test framework) can be a good starting point.

Database

#13 - Use Mongoose to object model your database
Mongoose makes it easier to interface with your databse. By offering additional interface features like MongoDB validation, schema's and constructing better documents. It's an abstraction layer on top of MongoDB.

#14 - Implement user authentication with passport.js
Passport is authentication middleware for Node. It offers more detailed support for authentication using a username and password but also external login methods like Facebook, Twitter.

#15 - Implement real-time data with socket.io
Socket.IO enables real-time, bidirectional and event-based communication. Very useful if you want to enable users to communicate (chat) with eachother.

#16 - Implement an Headless CMS
Let users dynamically add data to your application by implementing a CMS. Headless CMSes (like Strapi.io, Sanity etc.) are good choices for node.js applications.

#17 - Try to implement some sort of 'relational database' in MongDB
MongoDB is document based by nature. Instead of being relational like MySQL. You can try to do some data moddeling by restructuring your database for allowing basic relationships or references. Like embedded relationships or referenced relationships.