ReviewsAPI

Table of Contents

1. Introduction
2. Technologies
3. Getting Started
4. Overview
5. Challenges
6. Scaling
7. Documentation
8. Future Improvements

Introduction

• ReviewsAPI is a multi-layered backend system that stores ~25 million records of product review data. This project was commissioned by a client in order to replace their previous backend system with a more performant version. This project was initiated with the goal of serving 1,000 client requests per second while maintaining a 0% error rate.

Technologies

• Node.js
• Express
• MySQL
• Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud
• NGINX
• k6.io - Performance testing in development
• Loader.io - Performance testing in production

Getting Started

1. Fork & clone repository
2. Navigate to root directory on local machine
3. Install the project's dependencies

npm install

4. Start server

npm run server-dev

5. Check in terminal that ReviewsAPI is running, and that it is connected to the remote MySQL database. (Remote MySQL instance may be turned off)

Overview

Challenges

Choosing DB

Data ETL

Reaching 1,000rps

Scaling

Horizontal

Vertical

Documentation

• This is an API service that provides consumer review information for a project titled Project Catwalk. Project Catwalk is an e-commerce site with a large quantity of clothing and footwear products. As stated previously, this API service provides all information about the ratings & reviews of products in the catalog. Project Catwalk uses 3 separate services for its data.

List Reviews by Product

• GET /reviews
• Returns a list of reviews for a given product. This list does not include any reviews that have been reported by a user viewing them on the client.

Query Parameters:

• page - integer - Selects the page of results to return - default 1
• count - integer - Specifies how many results per page to return - default 5
• sort - text - Changes the sort order of reviews to be based on "newest", "helpful", or "relevant"
• product_id - integer - Specifies the product for which to retrieve reviews

Response:

• Status: 200 OK

    {
      "product": "2",
      "page": 0,
      "count": 5,
      "results": [
        {
          "review_id": 5,          "rating": 3,
          "summary": "I'm enjoying wearing these shades",
          "recommend": false,
          "response": null,
          "body": "Comfortable and practical.",
          "date": "2019-04-14T00:00:00.000Z",
          "reviewer_name": "shortandsweeet",
          "helpfulness": 5,
          "photos": [{
              "id": 1,
              "url": "urlplaceholder/review_5_photo_number_1.jpg"
            },
            {
              "id": 2,
              "url": "urlplaceholder/review_5_photo_number_2.jpg"
            },
            // ...
          ]
        },
        {
          "review_id": 3,
          "rating": 4,
          "summary": "I am liking these glasses",
          "recommend": false,
          "response": "Glad you're enjoying the product!",
          "body": "They are very dark. But that's good because I'm in very sunny spots",
          "date": "2019-06-23T00:00:00.000Z",
          "reviewer_name": "bigbrotherbenjamin",
          "helpfulness": 5,
          "photos": [],
        },
        // ...
      ]
    }

Retrieve Product Review Metadata

• GET /reviews/meta
• Returns review metadata for a given product.

Query Parameter:

• product_id - integer - Required ID of the product for which data shold be returned

Response:

• STATUS 200 OK

    {
      "product_id": "2",
      "ratings": {
        2: 1,
        3: 1,
        4: 2,
        // ...
      },
      "recommended": {
        0: 5
        // ...
      },
      "characteristics": {
        "Size": {
          "id": 14,
          "value": "4.0000"
        },
        "Width": {
          "id": 15,
          "value": "3.5000"
        },
        "Comfort": {
          "id": 16,
          "value": "4.0000"
        },
        // ...
      }

Post a Review

• POST /reviews
• Add a review for the product being viewed.

Body Parameters:

• product_id - integer - Required ID of the product to post the review for
• rating - int - Integer 1-5 indicating overall product rating
• summary - text - Summary text of the review
• body - text - Continued or full text of the review
• recommend - bool - Value indicating if the reviewer recommends the product
• name - text - Username of review writer
• email - text - Email address of review writer
• photos - [text] - Array of text URLs that link to images to be shown
• characteristics - object - Object of keys representing characteristic_id and values representing the review value for that characteristic. ex: { "14": 5, "15": 5 //...}

Response:

• STATUS 201 CREATED

Mark Review as Helpful

• PUT /reviews/:review_id/helpful
• Updates a review to show it was found helpful

Path Parameter:

• review_id - integer - Required ID of the review to update

Response:

• STATUS 204 NO CONTENT

Report Review

• PUT /reviews/:review_id/report
• Updates a review to show it was reported. Note, this action does not delete the review, but the review will not be returned in GET to /reviews/ anymore.

Path Parameter:

• review_id - integer - Required ID of the review to update

Response:

• STATUS 204 NO CONTENT

Future Improvements

• Containerize with Docker / Kubernetes