org_roam/Linux/20260104155940-server_backend.org

Server Backend

• Introduction
• Structure
• Running the Application
• Bruno
• Future?
  • Integration with notes.zainezq.com
• Update

Introduction

The original backend was written using FastAPI and has now been archived.

In replacement, I have written a Java Spring Boot backend that handles all of the API calls the domain zainezq.com uses.

Here is the repository for the backend:

Link to the backend repository

Structure

The backend is structured as a typical Spring Boot application. It consists of several packages that handle different aspects of the application:

• Controllers: These classes handle incoming HTTP requests and map them to appropriate service methods.
• Services: These classes contain the business logic of the application.
• Repositories: These classes interact with the database to perform CRUD operations.
• Models: These classes represent the data structures used in the application.

The full list of API endpoints can be viewed using Swagger UI, which is available at the /swagger-ui.html endpoint once the application is running.

Running the Application

The application is built using Maven. To run the application, you can utilise the Makefile provided in the repository.

The project is packaged as a Docker container, making it easy to deploy. You can build and run the Docker container using the following commands:

    docker compose build org_backend

    docker compose up -d org_backend

    # Alternatively:
    docker compose down && docker compose build --no-cache && docker compose up -d

    # To check logs

    docker logs -f org_backend

Bruno

Bruno is used for testing the backend API endpoints. It is a simple HTTP client that allows you to send requests to the backend and view the responses. I used the OpenAPI specification to generate Bruno tests for each endpoint.

Future?

Integration with notes.zainezq.com

As the API is primarily used by zainezq.com, I want to think of ways that notes.zainezq.com could also use it. This website is used to store all my notes, and they are exported using org-publish in Emacs. Perhaps I could write an Emacs Lisp package that interacts with the backend API to store and retrieve notes.

Flow of how a note would be written:

1. User writes a note in notes.zainezq.com as org mode.
2. When the note is saved, a POST request is sent to the backend API with the note content.
3. The backend API stores the note in the database.
4. This will trigger a function that republishes the notes website to include the new note.

Need to think more about this.

Update

The org-backend is no longer hosted using docker, it is now using systemd. The backend is still built using Maven, but it is now deployed as a standalone application rather than a Docker container.

Here are the commands needed:

  # To build the application
  mvn clean package -DskipTests

  # To run the application
  java -jar target/org_backend-1.0.0-SNAPSHOT.jar

  # systemctl commands
  sudo systemctl start org_backend
  sudo systemctl stop org_backend
  sudo systemctl restart org_backend
  sudo systemctl status org_backend

  # To check logs
  journalctl -u org_backend -f