We will be building an API for the purpose of accessing application data programmatically. The intention here is to mimic the building of a real world backend service (such as reddit) which should provide this information to the front end architecture.
Your database will be PSQL, and you will interact with it using node-postgres.
You will need to create two .env files for your project: .env.test and .env.development. Into each, add PGDATABASE=<database_name_here>, with the correct database name for that environment (see /db/setup.sql for the database names). Double check that these .env files are .gitignored.
You'll need to run npm install at this point - Please do not install specific packages as you can do this down the line when you need them.