Album Collection API

Objective

Scenario

Our super hip ironic friend needs an easy way to curate soundscapes for the Italian scooter/coffee hybrid co-op startup at which they volunteer (they also fix old polaroid cameras).

They have tasked us with creating an application that can easily keep track of their EXTENSIVE record collection and access music by artists, albums, or individual tracks. This collection is in a constant state of flux, so it is essential for the users to be able to update the collection and it's elements.

Requirements

API Creation

We are going to create an API using ASP.Net Entity Framework that will handle our DB and interactions with it.

Requirements

• Create a RESTful API with ASP.Net

• Endpoints for the following:

  • All CRUD operations for artists

    • Create endpoint
    • Read endpoint
    • Update endpoint
    • Delete endpoint

  • All CRUD operations for albums

    • Create endpoint
    • Read endpoint
    • Update endpoint
    • Delete endpoint

  • All CRUD operations for songs

    • Create endpoint
    • Read endpoint
    • Update endpoint
    • Delete endpoint

• A database service layer for retrieving and storing artists, albums, and songss from the database and interacting with the controllers.

Relationships

Our user should be able to:

• access albums from the artist that made them.
• access songs from the album the song is on.

User Input Fields

Each entity should have fields the user can interact with:

• Should have ratings (rating system can be your own design)
• Should have comments with a way to add them

Front-end

Next we will create our interactive front-end. It should be an SPA (Single Page Application) that uses JS to build out components that our users can interact with. Use modular JS along with WebPack to create reusable components. This application should allow you to create new artists, albums and songs, edit details about each of the items after they have been created, and delete items.

User Interaction

Our users should be able to add new instances of all entities as well as comments and ratings

Entities

artist

• name
• image
• albums

• any other pertinent info. which could include:

  • age
  • record label
  • hometown

album

• title
• image
• songs
• record label

song

• title
• link (optional)
• duration

Grading:

Your grading will be based on five areas:

• Mastery of RESTful APIs and SPA
• Test Driven Development
• Version Control and GitHub
• Working Software
• Clean Code

Test Driven Development

Ideally, you should write your code by writing tests first. If you do so, each public method you write should have a unit test that covers its behavior. The test classes should also be well maintained and follow the principles of clean code.

In order to receive a PASSING grade, all of the following principles must be met:

• 75% of the public methods you add to any of your classes should be covered by unit tests.
• Tests include appropriate Arrange, Act, and Assert sections.
• All tests pass.

Version Control and GitHub

Your commit history should tell the story of the development of your code.

• Commits were small and had descriptive messages.
• Commit history shows code contribution from both partners.
• New branches were created for each feature.
• Use of pull requests in GitHub to approve the merge of the feature branch into your dev branch, and eventual merge of dev into master.

Working Software

In order to receive a PASSING grade, working software must consist of an application that runs without error and meets all of the Required Features listed above.

Clean Code

Clean code is readable, easy to understand, formatted, and not littered with commented out code.

In order to receive a PASSING grade, all of the following principles must be met:

• Formatted code

  • Use indentations, new lines, brackets, and empty lines to create code that is easy to read and understand.

• Good naming convention

  • Variable, class, and method names should inform the reader of its purpose.
  • Variable, class, and method names should use proper casing.

• Comments are rare and only when absolutely necessary

  • If you use descriptive method and variable names, your reliance on comments should be minimal. In addition, you should never leave blocks of commented out code in your committed code.