A robust full-stack web application built with Node.js and MySQL.

While learning Node.js and the Express framework, I tried to build a simple project, represented by a login & crud APP. ✨The key features are:

• Full Authentication Flow: Secure Login/Register system using Passport.js (Local Strategy).
• Security: Passwords never stored in plain text; they are hashed and salted using bcrypt.
• Roles: Users can view their profile, while admin can delete and update users(CRUD capabilities). Of course, admin users cannot be deleted to ensure system stability.
• Database security: Connection to a MySQL database and all the users are saved into a database via phpMyAdmin
• Basic paginated API to handle large datasets.

Components	Technology
Backend	Node.js, Express, Passport.js
Front-end	Embedded JavaScript, Bootstrap 5
Database	MySQL created via phpMyAdmin (Pool Connection)
Auth	Passport.js, Express sessions
Security	BCrypt, Flash

Instalation & Setup

1. Clone this repository.
2. Install dependencies: npm install.
3. Create a MySQL database named nodejs and run the following command to create the users table used in this project:

    CREATE TABLE persons(
    PersonID INT PRIMARY KEY AUTO_INCREMENT,
    name VARCHAR(255),
    email VARCHAR(255) UNIQUE,
    password VARCHAR(255),
    role VARCHAR(50) DEFAULT 'user');

4. Create a .env file in your root directory:

    ACCESS_SECRET=your_super_secret_key
    HOST=localhost
    user=root
    database=nodejs

5. Run the application with: npm start or npm run dev

Visit http://localhost:8000/users

Routes

Method	Endpoint	Description
GET	/users/login	Login page
POST	/users/register	Create a new account
PATCH	/users/update/:id	Update user details (Admin only)
DELETE	/users/delete/:id	Delete a user (Admin only)
GET	/users/:limit/:page	API Paginated with users

Code brief summary

So, the main file server.jsinitializes the express server, uses a global middleware for error handling, uses the json and the urlencoded middleware, and the router, which centralizes traffic through a modular router. In the views folder(frontend), there are the .ejs files, to render dynamic content, which might contain some embedded ejs, displaying user-specific data passed from the server and overrides the form method. In the routes/route.js, it is the main functionality, it contains a route for every functionality, the connection to the database using a MySQL Connection Pool, and the route handlers for registration, profile updates and deletions. In the utils/passportconfig.js, I implemented a strategy to authenticate the user, comparing the plain-text password with the password from the database. It also contains serializeUser and deserializeUser to maintain user state across requests, identifying the user by their PersonID.. Also, in this file there is the logic implemented for the authorization logic (isItAdmin) to protect sensitive routes, ensuring only users with the 'admin' role can modify or delete data.

Documentation & references for this small project

• Express API Documentation
• Passport JS Login Documentation
• NPM BCrypt Library

Author: Moldovan Alex