Nodes Resource REST API

Contents

• Introduction
• Nodes retrieval operations
  • Get a Node by ID
  • Get all Nodes
  • Get information of descendant nodes of a node by its ID
  • Get information of children nodes of a node by its ID
• Nodes modification operations
  • Create a new Node
  • Add a child Node

Introduction

Nodes are created to represents indicators of identifying an expert in some fields.
A typical node looks like the following:

{
    "nodeDisplay": "name",
    "nodeDescription": "description",
    "nodeTags": [
      { "_id": "someId" },
      { "_id": "otherId" }
    ],
    "nodeParents": [
      { "_id": "aParent" }
    ],
    "nodeChildren": [
      { "_id": "child1" },
      { "_id": "child2" }
    ],
    "nodeVotes": [
      {
         "user_id": "someUser",
         "node_id": "0d62543e9c20e1e7",
         "type": "1"
      }
    ],
    "nodeStatus": "1",
    "userId": "someUserId",
    "nodeCreateAt": "2015-09-29 13:42:51",
    "_id": "0d62543e9c20e1e7"
}

For a Node object, there are two permitted vote types:

"1" for voting up
"-1" for voting down

You can also give a user ID when creating a new root node or a child node. If there is no user ID given, the "userId" in Node object will be "Anonymous" (default value)

Nodes retrieval operations

Get a Node by ID

GET /api/nodes/{node_id}
The response will look like

{
  "data": {
    "nodeDisplay": "name",
    "nodeDescription": "description",
    "nodeTags": [
      { "_id": "someId" },
      { "_id": "otherId" }
    ],
    "nodeParents": [
      { "_id": "aParent" }
    ],
    "nodeChildren": [
      { "_id": "child1" },
      { "_id": "child2" }
    ],
    "nodeVotes": [
      {
         "user_id": "someUser",
         "node_id": "0d62543e9c20e1e7",
         "type": "1"
      }
    ],
    "nodeStatus": "1",
    "userId": "someUserId",
    "nodeCreateAt": "2015-09-29 13:42:51",
    "_id": "0d62543e9c20e1e7"
  },
  "success": "true"
}

If an ID is given but does not exist in database, an error will be returned as a response:

{
  "data": "No node found with _id = 9292939i",
  "success": "true"
}

Get all Nodes

GET /api/nodes

Get information of descendant nodes of a Node by its ID

GET /api/nodes/[node_id]/descendant
If a node is successfully retrieved, the response will generally be

      {
        "result": "success",
        "data":
        {
          "nodeDisplay": "name",
          "nodeDescription": "description",
          "nodeTags": [
            { "_id": "someId" },
            { "_id": "otherId" }
          ],
          "nodeParents": [
            { "_id": "aParent" }
          ],
          "nodeChildren": [
            { "_id": "child1" },
            { "_id": "child2" }
          ],
          "nodeVotes": [
            { "_id": "goodVote3329" },
            { "_id": "badVote10641" }
          ],
          "nodeStatus": "1",
          "nodeCreateAt": "2015-09-29 13:42:51"
        }
      }

Note: in this case the response will contain a list of descendant node information.

Get information of children nodes of a Node by its ID

GET /api/nodes/[node_id]/children/
Response:

      {
        "result": "success",
        "data":
        {
          "nodeDisplay": "name",
          "nodeDescription": "description",
          "nodeTags": [
            { "_id": "someId" },
            { "_id": "otherId" }
          ],
          "nodeParents": [
            { "_id": "aParent" }
          ],
          "nodeChildren": [
            { "_id": "child1" },
            { "_id": "child2" }
          ],
          "nodeVotes": [
            { "_id": "goodVote3329" },
            { "_id": "badVote10641" }
          ],
          "nodeStatus": "1",
          "nodeCreateAt": "2015-09-29 13:42:51"
        }
      }

Note: in this case the response will contain a list of children nodes information.

Nodes modification operations

Create a new node

POST /api/nodes

The API accept a request body in JSON as follows:

{
  "nodeDisplay": "This is a test Node name",
  "nodeDescription": "This is a test Node description",
  "userId": "user_test_id"
}

If someone do this without logged in, just leave 'userId' as blank.
If the create successful, a JSON array of all nodes will be returned as a response.

Add a child node

POST /api/nodes

The request body will look like the following:

{
  "nodeDisplay": "this is a test child node name",
  "nodeDescription": "this is a test child node description",
  "nodeParents": [
    {"_id": "someParentId"}
  ],
  "userId": "user_test_id"
}

Note: the difference between create a new node and add a child node to an existing node is the "nodeParents" in request body. If there is a parent node, then the request will lead to a new child node, otherwise a new root node.