Task API

A CRUD API for managing a to-do list, built with Node.js and Express as part of the FlyRank Backend Internship (Week 2–3, Assignments A1 and A2).

Supports full Create, Read, Update, and Delete on tasks, interactive documentation via Swagger UI, and a couple of stretch extras (filtering, search). Data is now persisted in a SQLite database — tasks survive server restarts.

🚀 Built as part of the FlyRank Backend Internship (Week 2–3, Assignments A1 & A2).

Tech stack

• Node.js + Express — server and routing
• better-sqlite3 — synchronous SQLite driver; tasks are stored in tasks.db
• swagger-ui-express — interactive API docs, served from a hand-written OpenAPI 3.0 spec (openai.json)

Why SQLite

SQLite was the required lane for this assignment, and it's a natural fit for a small local project like this one: no separate database server to install or run, the entire database lives in a single file (tasks.db) that's created automatically on first run, and better-sqlite3 provides a synchronous API that's simple to reason about for straightforward CRUD — no connection pooling or async query juggling needed at this scale. The trade-off is that SQLite isn't built for concurrent multi-writer workloads, which is fine here but is exactly why later weeks move to Postgres.

Where the database lives

• File: tasks.db, created in the project root the first time the server runs.
• Table: tasks (id INTEGER PRIMARY KEY AUTOINCREMENT, title TEXT, done INTEGER).
• Connection setup, table creation, and first-run seeding all happen in db.js.
• tasks.db is not committed to git — see .gitignore. Deleting the file and restarting the server will recreate it empty and reseed the three example tasks.

Prerequisites

You need Node.js 18 or later (npm comes bundled with it). Check if you already have it:

node --version
npm --version

If either command fails, install Node from nodejs.org (choose the LTS version) — the installer includes npm automatically. No API keys or environment variables are needed for this project; the SQLite database file is created automatically.

Install & run

# 1. Clone the repo and enter the folder
git clone https://github.com/davidyassa/CRUD_API.git
cd CRUD_API

# 2. Install dependencies (reads package.json + package-lock.json,
#    installs exact locked versions into node_modules/)
npm install

# 3. Start the server
node server.js

You should see:

Server running on http://localhost:3000

On first run, tasks.db is created automatically in the project root, with the tasks table and three seed tasks. On every subsequent run, your existing data loads as-is — nothing is reseeded unless the table is empty.

The server is now running on http://localhost:3000. Interactive docs are available at http://localhost:3000/docs.

Leave this terminal running. Open a second terminal to send requests (curl examples below) or use the Swagger UI in your browser.

Endpoints

Method	Path	Description
GET	/	API description
GET	/health	Liveness check
GET	/tasks	List all tasks — supports ?done=true|false and ?search=term query filters
GET	/tasks/:id	Get a single task by id
POST	/tasks	Create a task ({ "title": "..." } in body)
PUT	/tasks/:id	Update a task's title and/or done
DELETE	/tasks/:id	Delete a task

Temporarily disabled during the SQLite migration: GET /stats and POST /reset are commented out in server.js pending re-implementation against the database (tracked for a later stage) — they are not currently live endpoints.

Status codes

Code	Meaning
200	Successful read/update
201	Task created
204	Task deleted (empty body)
400	Invalid or missing input (e.g. empty title, malformed JSON)
404	Task with that id doesn't exist
409	A task with that title already exists

Example request

>> curl.exe -i -X POST http://localhost:3000/tasks -H "Content-Type: application/json" --% -d "{\"title\":\"Buy milk\"}"
HTTP/1.1 201 Created
X-Powered-By: Express                                                                            
Content-Type: application/json; charset=utf-8
Content-Length: 40
ETag: W/"28-PpSBYV7i68cXyGc7AhjVpkZkY5Q"
Date: Wed, 12 Aug 2026 14:03:41 GMT
Connection: keep-alive
Keep-Alive: timeout=5

{"id":4,"title":"Buy milk","done":false}

Swagger UI

Full interactive documentation, including request/response schemas and a "Try it out" panel for every endpoint, is available at /docs once the server is running.

(Screenshot: paste your /docs capture into a docs/ folder in the repo and update the path above, or drag the image directly into this README on GitHub.)

Database viewer

Screenshot of tasks.db opened in DB Browser for SQLite, showing the tasks table:

(Screenshot: paste your DB Browser capture into docs/ and update the path above.)

Example SQL query

While exploring the database manually in DB Browser for SQLite (Stage 4), I ran:

DELETE FROM tasks WHERE done = 1;

This deletes every row where done is 1 (completed tasks). Running it against my seeded/test data cleared out the completed rows — a direct, visible confirmation that manual database changes take effect immediately and are reflected the next time the API reads from it (GET /tasks returned fewer rows afterward, with no code change required on the server).

This is the same query pattern the app itself could expose as a "clear completed" endpoint later — the SQL is trivial, only the wiring (a route calling this statement) would need to be added.

Extras built beyond the core spec

• Query filtering — GET /tasks?done=true and GET /tasks?search=milk (combinable)
• Duplicate-title check (409) on POST /tasks

Known limitations

• GET /stats and POST /reset are currently disabled — they still reference the old in-memory array and haven't been ported to SQLite yet.
• No authentication — this is a local development API, not production-hardened.
• Port 3000 is hardcoded rather than read from an environment variable.
• SQLite is a single-file, single-writer database — fine for this project's scale, not intended for concurrent production traffic. Postgres migration is planned for a later assignment (A3).

Project structure

.
├── server.js # Express app — routes and request handling
├── db.js # SQLite connection, table creation, first-run seeding
├── repositories/
│ └── taskRepository.js # All SQL queries — the data-access layer
├── tasks.db # SQLite database file (gitignored)
├── openai.json # OpenAPI 3.0 spec powering Swagger UI at /docs
├── package.json
└── README.md