visual-chronicle

Before you start a tutorial

These are the steps you must do before you can run the tutorials for the Visual Chronicle service.

Expect this preparation to take about 20 minutes to complete.

Preparing for the tutorials

The following instructions describe how to prepare for running the tutorials on Windows. For information about how to prepare MacOS for the tutorials, visit the MacOS installation guide.

To complete the tutorials in this section, you need the following:

• A GitHub account
• A development system (PC, Mac, or Linux) running a current or long-term support (LTS version of the operating system).
• The following software on your development system:
  • Git (for the command line)
  • GitHub Desktop (optional)
  • A fork of the Visual Chronicle repo
  • A current/LTS version of node.js
  • A current version of json-server
  • A current copy of the database file. You can get this by syncing your fork.
  • TIP: If you’re using a fork of the repo, create a working branch in which to do your tutorials. Create a new branch for each tutorial to prevent a mistake in one from affecting your work in another.
  • The Postman desktop app. Because you run the Visual Chronicle service on your development system with an http://localhost hostname, the web-version of Postman can’t perform the exercises.

Test your development system

To test your development system, follow these steps:

1. Create and checkout a test branch of your fork of the Visual-Chronicle repo. Your GitHub repo workspace is the directory that contains your fork of the visual chronicle repo.

    cd <your GitHub repo workspace>
    ls
    # (see the visual chronicle directory in the list)
    cd visual-chronicle
    git checkout -b tutorial-test
    cd api
    json-server database.json
   

   If your development system is installed correctly, you should see the service start and display the URL of the service: http://localhost:3000.

2. Make a test call to the service.

    curl http://localhost:3000/users
   

3. If the service is running correctly, you should see a list of users from the service, such as in this example.

    [
        {
            "id": 1,
            "name": "Alice Johnson",
            "email": "alice@example.com"
        },
        {
            "id": 2,
            "name": "Bob Smith",
            "email": "bob@example.com"
        },
        ...
   

If you don’t see the list of users, or receive an error in any step of the procedure, investigate and correct the error before continuing. Some common situations that cause errors include:

1. You mistyped a command.
2. You aren’t in the correct directory.
3. A required software component didn’t install correctly.
4. A required software component isn’t up to date.

If you see the list of users from the service, you’re ready to do the tutorials.

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