ALIAS CHECK

The Alias Check helps confirm the availability of a username on different social networks. While it is intended as a learning project by the Tech Interviews Nigeria that would introduce participants to different technologies in fullstack development, ranging from frontend technologies like NextJS to NodeJS and SQLite or Postgres on the backend in addition to Docker for development, its utility is quite apparent. For example, small businesses can see the application in the selection of an available and catchy name among major social media platform.

This is project is structured so that the developer can choose to set it up with or without Docker.

PROJECT SETUP

With Docker Compose

To start the project using Docker, even from scratch, run the following command:

cp .env.sample .env
docker-compose up

Then go to http://localhost:3000/ to access the frontend or http://localhost:8080/ to access the backend

Backend-only Development

For backend developers that might only need to run the server and database, run the following command:

docker-compose up server

Frontend-only Development

For frontend developers who might not need access to the backend for the features they want to add, stop other services besides client after starting up:

docker-compose up && \
docker stop $(docker-compose ps --services | grep -v client)

Checkout docker-compose documentation on some of the commandline features available.

Without Docker Compose

Though this project was built for easy startup with Docker, it can also be run without Docker. You would need to run the commands on two terminals, one for the frontend and the other for the backend:

Frontend

On one terminal, go to the frontend folder named client, install dependencies and run the development server:

cd client
npm install
npm run dev

You should now be able to see the frontend at http://localhost:3000/

Backend

The backend requires authorization keys from the social media platforms that we support and will increase as time goes by:

• For twitter :Register for a twitter developer account at twitter developer account then create api keys. Of importance is the Bearer Token to which on our .env file populate the key TWITTER_BEARER_TOKEN

To start the backend application, make sure you have typescript installed on your system. Checkout https://www.typescriptlang.org/download. Once installed, run;

cp .env.sample .env
npm install
npm run dev

Access the application at the address http://localhost:8080/health

Testing

From the root directory;

npm run test

UI / UX Resources

You may find some useful resources for improving the UI / UX of the app here.

Architecture

This is roughly the architecture for the backend