Blog API ✍️

A robust and scalable RESTful API for a blog management system, built with Node.js, Express, and MongoDB. This project provides a complete backend solution with role-based access control, JWT authentication, and full CRUD operations for blog content.

The API is fully documented using OpenAPI (Swagger), providing an interactive way to explore and test the endpoints.

Live Demo: https://api-blog-management.onrender.com
Live API Documentation: https://api-blog-management.onrender.com/api-docs

Features⚡

• Role-Based Access Control: Differentiated routes and permissions for Admin and User roles.
• Authentication: Secure user and admin authentication using JSON Web Tokens (JWT).
• CRUD Operations: Full Create, Read, Update, and Delete functionality for blog posts, managed by admins.
• Blog Management for Users:
  • View all blogs with pagination support.
  • Filter blogs by topic.
  • View a specific blog post.
  • Manage a personal list of favorite blogs.
• API Documentation: Interactive API documentation powered by Swagger UI.
• Database Integration: Seamlessly integrated with MongoDB using Mongoose for data modeling and persistence.

Tech Stack 🚀

Technology	Description
Node.js	JavaScript runtime environment
Express.js	Web framework for building the REST API
MongoDB	NoSQL database to store application data
Mongoose	ODM library for MongoDB and Node.js
JSON Web Token (JWT)	For securing endpoints and managing sessions
dotenv	For managing environment variables
Postman	API endpoints testing
Swagger UI	For generating interactive API documentation

Getting Started ⚙️

To get a local copy up and running, follow these simple steps.

Prerequisites

• Node.js (v14 or higher)
• npm
• MongoDB (local instance or a cloud-hosted service something like MongoDB Atlas)

Installation & Setup 📦

1. Clone the repository:

   git clone https://github.com/03-Bunny-06/blog-api.git
   cd blog-api

2. Install NPM packages:

   npm install

3. Set up environment variables: Create a .env file in the root directory and add your MongoDB connection string and a port number. The JWT_KEY is defined in config.js.

   # .env
   DATABASE_URL="your_mongodb_connection_string"
   PORT=8080

4. Start the server:

   npm start

The server will start on the port specified in your .env file (or 8080 by default). You can access the API documentation at http://localhost:8080/api-docs.

Data Models 🗂️

Admin Schema

{
    username: String,
    password: String
}

User Schema

{
    username: String,
    password: String,
    favouriteBlogs: [{
        type: mongoose.Schema.Types.ObjectId,
        ref: 'Blogs'
    }]
}

Blogs Schema

{
    title: String,
    description: String,
    imageLink: String,
    topic: String
}

API Endpoints 🔗

The API is structured into two main roles: Admin and User. All protected routes require a JWT token in the Authorization header (Bearer <token>).

Admin Routes (/admin)

Method	Endpoint	Description	Authentication
POST	/signup	Register a new admin account.	Open
POST	/signin	Log in and receive an auth token.	Open
POST	/create-blog	Create a new blog post.	Admin
PUT	/edit-blog/:blogId	Update an existing blog post.	Admin
DELETE	/delete-blog/:blogId	Delete a blog post.	Admin

User Routes (/user)

Method	Endpoint	Description	Authentication
POST	/signup	Register a new user account.	Open
POST	/signin	Log in and receive an auth token.	Open
GET	/blogs	Get all blog posts, with pagination and limit.	Open
GET	/blogs/:blogId	Get details of a specific blog post.	User
GET	/search?t=<topic>	Filter blogs by a specific topic.	User
POST	/add-favourite-blog/:blogId	Add a blog to the user's favorites list.	User
GET	/my-favourite-blogs	View all blogs in the user's favorites list.	User

(Note: The signup and signin can be done through postman as this a complete backend project with no frontend. So the postman acts as a frontend for request & response handling or you can use the Swagger Documentation for API testing and request, response handling.)

API Testing with Postman 🧪

• The repository includes a collection.json file exported from Postman.
• It contains structured test folders covering authentication, CRUD operations, protected routes, and error cases.
• You can import this collection directly into Postman to run predefined requests against the API.

Import Instructions

1. Open Postman
2. Click Import
3. Load the collection.json file
4. Start testing the endpoints