Menu Management Backend

This Node.js backend server manages menus divided into categories, subcategories, and items. It provides APIs to create, retrieve, update, and search for categories, subcategories, and items.

Loom Video

Setup

1. Clone this repository.

   git clone https://github.com/Atif-27/Menu_Management.git

2. Change Directory

   cd Menu_Management

3. Install dependencies.

   npm install

4. Set Up your env file

   DB_URI=mongodb+srv://atif276ali:[email protected]/menu?retryWrites=true&w=majority&appName=Cluster0
   
   PORT=9000

5. Run the server.

   npm start

6. You can now use Postman or any API client to interact with the server. Here is my postman collection Link

7. Imp Note - Select the New environment mode otherwise routes wont be working

   

8. Paste the URL in initial and current value of the environment in case of error

menu-management-three.vercel.app/api/v1

Tech Stack

• Node.js: JavaScript runtime
• Express.js: Web application framework for Node.js
• MongoDB: NoSQL database for storing menu data
• Mongoose: MongoDB object modeling for Node.js
• Zod: TypeScript-inspired schema validation library for JavaScript

Models

Model	Description
Category	Represents a menu category
Subcategory	Represents a subcategory of a category
Item	Represents an item in a subcategory

Routes

Categories

Route	Method	Description
/api/v1/categories	POST	Create a new category
/api/v1/categories	GET	Get all categories
/api/v1/categories/:id	GET	Get a single category by ID or name
/api/v1/categories/:id	PUT	Update a category by ID

Subcategories

Route	Method	Description
/api/v1/subcategories	POST	Create a new subcategory
/api/v1/subcategories	GET	Get all subcategories
/api/v1/subcategories/category/:id	GET	Get all subcategories under a category
/api/v1/subcategories/:id	GET	Get a single subcategory by ID or name
/api/v1/subcategories/:id	PUT	Update a subcategory by ID

Items

Route	Method	Description
/api/v1/items	POST	Create a new item
/api/v1/items	GET	Get all items
/api/v1/items/category/:id	GET	Get all items under a category
/api/v1/items/subcategory/:id	GET	Get all items under a subcategory
/api/v1/items/:id	GET	Get a single item by ID or name
/api/v1/items/:id	PUT	Update an item by ID
/api/v1/items/search/:name	GET	Search items by name

Short Answers

• Which database have you chosen and why? I have chosen MongoDB because of its flexibility with JSON-like documents, scalability, and ease of use, which aligns well with the dynamic nature of menu management data.

• 3 things that you learned from this assignment?

  • Enhanced my understanding of building RESTful APIs with Express.js.
  • Gained experience in schema validation using Zod.
  • Learned more about managing relationships between MongoDB collections.

• What was the most difficult part of the assignment? Designing and implementing the database schema to handle the relationships between categories, subcategories, and items efficiently.

• What would you have done differently given more time? Given more time, I would have integrated multer for image uploads, used Cloudinary for image storage, implemented pagination for limiting API responses, and added sorting capabilities for better data organization and scalability.