📋 Planner Flow: A Simple Task Manager (Node.js & Express)

A lightweight, yet deeply structured task management application built with Node.js and Express — designed to showcase backend development skills and architectural understanding.

---

🚀 Features

• ✅ Full CRUD Operations: Create, Read, Update, and Delete tasks
• ✅ Task Completion Status: Mark tasks as completed or incomplete
• ✅ RESTful API: Clean and well-defined API endpoints
• ✅ Robust Error Handling:
  • Custom API errors for specific HTTP statuses
  • Asynchronous error wrapping to simplify try-catch blocks
  • Dedicated middleware for handling 404 (Not Found) routes
• ✅ MongoDB Integration: Persistent data storage using MongoDB with Mongoose ODM
• ✅ Basic Frontend: Simple, vanilla JavaScript-powered web interface
• ✅ Environment Variable Management: Secure handling of sensitive data with .env

---

📁 Project Structure

Planner Flow/
├── controllers/            # 🚦 API endpoint logic (CRUD operations for tasks)
│   └── tasks.js
├── db/                     # 💾 Database connection setup
│   └── connect.js
├── errors/                 # ⛔ Custom error classes and helpers
│   └── custom-error.js
├── middleware/             # ⚙️ Express middleware functions (async handling, error handling, 404)
│   ├── async.js
│   ├── error-handler.js
│   └── not-found.js
├── model/                  # 📚 Mongoose data models
│   └── Task.js
├── public/                 # 🌐 Static frontend files (HTML, CSS, client-side JS)
│   ├── browser-app.js
│   ├── edit-task.js
│   ├── favicon.ico
│   ├── index.html
│   ├── main.css
│   ├── normalize.css
│   └── task.html
├── routes/                 # 🛣️ Express route definitions for API endpoints
│   └── tasks.js
├── .env                    # 🔑 Environment variables (ignored by Git)
├── .gitignore              # 🚫 Files/folders to exclude from Git tracking
├── app.js                  # 🚀 Main application entry point
├── package-lock.json       # 🔒 Exact dependency versions
└── package.json            # 📦 Project metadata and dependencies

---

🛠 How It Works

1. app.js initializes the Express server, sets up middleware, and defines API routes
2. db/connect.js establishes a MongoDB connection using Mongoose
3. routes/tasks.js defines API endpoints (/api/v1/tasks) for HTTP methods
4. controllers/tasks.js contains the core logic for each API operation
5. model/Task.js defines the Mongoose schema for a Task document
6. middleware/async.js wraps async controller functions for error handling
7. middleware/error-handler.js centrally handles all application errors
8. public/ serves static HTML, CSS, and client-side JS (browser-app.js, edit-task.js) which interact with the backend API using axios

---

📦 Installation

Prerequisites

• Node.js: v14 or higher
• MongoDB: Local or cloud instance (e.g., MongoDB Atlas)

Steps

1. Clone the project:

   git clone [Your Project's GitHub Link]
   cd "Planner Flow"

2. Install dependencies:

   npm install

3. Configure environment variables:
   Create a .env file in the project root and add:

   MONGO_URI=mongodb+srv://<YOUR_USERNAME>:<YOUR_PASSWORD>@<YOUR_CLUSTER_URL>/TaskManagerDB?retryWrites=true&w=majority
   

   • MONGO_URI: Your MongoDB connection string
   • PORT: Server port (defaults to 6000 if not set)

---

▶️ Run the Server

• Production:

  node app.js

• Development (with auto-restart):

  npm start

---

🧪 Demo Use Case

1. Open your browser to http://localhost:PORT/
2. Add new tasks using the input field
3. View, edit, or delete existing tasks from the list
4. Navigate to task.html?id=<taskID> to directly edit a specific task

---

🧠 Skills Demonstrated

• Low-level understanding of Node.js HTTP server and Express.js routing
• Building and consuming RESTful APIs
• Database integration with MongoDB and Mongoose
• Effective error handling strategies
• Middleware pattern implementation
• Frontend-backend integration using vanilla JavaScript and Axios
• Environment variable management
• Modular and organized project structure

---

📍 Author

Custom-built by Shayan Sharifi as a personal project for understanding the depths of Node.js and Express.
It serves as a foundational example of a full-stack application, focusing on backend robustness and clear architecture.

Feel free to fork and expand it into your own task management system or use it as a learning resource!

---

✅ License

MIT