🚀 Blog API

A RESTful blog API built with Flask that allows for creating, reading, updating, and deleting blog posts, with advanced features like search and sorting.

Figure 1: Frontend interface for interacting with the Blog API

🎯 Project Overview

This project implements a complete blog management system with a Flask backend API and a simple frontend interface. It demonstrates RESTful API design principles and Client-Server architecture with cross-origin requests.

✨ Features

• RESTful API Endpoints: Full CRUD functionality for blog posts
• Search Capability: Filter posts by title or content
• Sorting: Order posts by title or content (ascending/descending)
• Error Handling: Proper HTTP status codes and error messages
• Frontend Interface: Simple UI for interacting with the API

Figure 2: Error handling interface for invalid requests

📁 Project Structure

master_blog_api/
├── backend/
│   ├── backend_app.py  # Main backend API with all endpoints
│   └── posts.py        # Data store for blog posts
├── frontend/
│   ├── frontend_app.py # Frontend server
│   ├── static/
│   │   ├── main.js     # Frontend JavaScript for API interaction
│   │   └── styles.css  # CSS styling
│   └── templates/
│       └── index.html  # Main HTML interface
├── assets/             # Documentation assets
│   ├── index.png      # Frontend interface screenshot
│   └── error_handler.png # Error handling screenshot
├── requirements.txt    # Python dependencies
└── README.md          # This file

🛠️ Prerequisites

• Python 3.6 or higher
• Flask
• Flask-CORS (for cross-origin requests)

🚀 Installation

1. Clone the repository:

git clone https://github.com/yourusername/blog-api.git
cd blog-api

2. Install the required packages:

pip install -r requirements.txt

💻 Running the Application

Backend Server

1. Navigate to the backend directory:

cd backend

2. Run the backend server:

python backend_app.py

The API will be available at http://localhost:5002/api

Frontend Server

1. Navigate to the frontend directory:

cd frontend

2. Run the frontend server:

python frontend_app.py

The frontend will be available at http://localhost:5001

🧪 Testing the API

Using the Frontend

The frontend provides a simple interface to:

• View all posts
• Add new posts
• Delete posts
• Sort posts by title or content (ascending/descending)

Using Postman

For testing all API endpoints, including those not available in the frontend, you can use Postman:

1. List Posts (GET)

• URL: http://localhost:5002/api/posts
• Optional query parameters:
  • sort: Field to sort by (title or content)
  • direction: Sort direction (asc or desc)
• Example: GET http://localhost:5002/api/posts?sort=title&direction=desc

2. Add Post (POST)

• URL: http://localhost:5002/api/posts
• Headers: Content-Type: application/json
• Body:

  {
    "title": "New Post Title",
    "content": "Post content goes here"
  }

• Response: 201 Created with the new post data

3. Update Post (PUT)

• URL: http://localhost:5002/api/posts/<id>
• Headers: Content-Type: application/json
• Body:

  {
    "title": "Updated Title",
    "content": "Updated content"
  }

• Response: 200 OK with the updated post data

4. Delete Post (DELETE)

• URL: http://localhost:5002/api/posts/<id>
• Response: 200 OK with success message

5. Search Posts (GET)

• URL: http://localhost:5002/api/posts/search
• Query parameters:
  • title: Search term for post titles
  • content: Search term for post contents
• Example: GET http://localhost:5002/api/posts/search?title=flask
• Response: Posts matching the search criteria

🔍 Testing Error Handling

Error handling can be tested by:

1. Missing Fields Error (400 Bad Request):

   • Send a POST request without required fields:

   curl -X POST http://localhost:5002/api/posts \
     -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
     -d '{"content": "Missing title field"}'

2. Not Found Error (404):

   • Try to update or delete a non-existent post:

   curl -X DELETE http://localhost:5002/api/posts/999

3. Invalid Sort Parameters (400 Bad Request):

   • Request with invalid sort direction:

   curl "http://localhost:5002/api/posts?sort=title&direction=invalid"

📡 API Endpoints

Method	Endpoint	Description
GET	/api/posts	List all posts
POST	/api/posts	Create a new post
PUT	/api/posts/{id}	Update a post
DELETE	/api/posts/{id}	Delete a post
GET	/api/posts/search	Search posts by title or content

📚 Code Documentation

The backend code is thoroughly documented with clear function docstrings and code comments explaining the functionality of each endpoint and its error handling.

🤝 Contributing

1. Fork the repository
2. Create your feature branch (git checkout -b feature/amazing-feature)
3. Commit your changes (git commit -m 'Add some amazing feature')
4. Push to the branch (git push origin feature/amazing-feature)
5. Open a Pull Request

📄 License

MIT License

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Happy coding! 🚀