MyMedJournal

Go check it out here!

Description

Overview

MyMedJournal is a web-app I created to help me manage the medical/bio-related research papers I was interested in reading. The application currently has three main features:

1. Search

   • Users can search any query and obtain a set of relevant documents that are in the famous PubMed database, a part of the U.S.A's National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI).
   • Upon searching, the returned elements will contain the title and abstract of relevant documents, along with a link to the associated study for further reading.

2. Favorites Playlist (Requires Account)

   • Users can easiliy develop their own set of favorite research articles. Users can add articles they find interesting or relevant to their research to a 'Favorites playlist' to come back to later without needing to search again.
   • Playlist persists on a MongoDB database -- so users can always come back to view and modify their playlist

3. Study Notes (Requires Account)

   • If there are any terms/topics one finds confusing or there is simply something users want to make note of, they can create, edit, and delete notes about their confusions or findings.
   • Personal notes are also persisted on a MongoDB database; thus, can always retrieve and modify notes when needed.

Technology Stack

• Backend: Node.js and Express.js

  • Developed a Node backend using the Express framework to serve client requests.
  • Created a backend API that conducts CRUD operations on a database to manage users, their favorites, and their notes.
  • Used the NCBI API to fetch relevant articles based on user queries.
  • Managed user authentication using JavaScript Web Tokens (JWT).

• Database: MongoDB

  • User information, notes, and favorites playlist all persist on a MongoDB database.
  • NoSQL-based database was used since the data managed was quite document-centric and doesn't necessarily require the structure of a relation database.
  • Mongoose provides great ODM library to communicate with MongoDB collections from the Node.js backend.

• Frontend: React.js, Redux, & React-Router

  • Created an aesthetically pleasing frontend interface via React.js to provide a good user experience.
  • Managed authenticated users using Redux to protect private frontend routes.
  • Managed routing by using React-Router library to ensure clear and easy navigation across the website.

Usage

The website is now up and running! If you want to run this locally, see the steps below.

Requirements

• Node.js: >=14.20.0
• npm
• MongoDB -- Required only if you want to store notes and create a favorites playlist. If you don't want to use these cool features, comment out lines 8 and 25 in the MyMedJournal/server/app.js that read: const dbConnect = require('./db/dbConnect') and dbConnect(), respectively.

Steps

1. Clone this repository, i.e., git clone https://github.com/Pedja-Djape/MyMedJournal.git
2. Open two terminals on your computer
   • Terminal 1
     • cd MyMedJournal/server
     • Create a file .env file in this directory. You will need to store a database connection string. You should add the following lines to your .env file:
       • DB_URL=mongodb+srv://<mdb_username>:<mdb_password>@cluster0.9oeyuny.mongodb.net/?retryWrites=true&w=majority
         • Make sure to sub in your own connection string.
       • ACCESS_TOKEN_SECRET=<SECRET_KEY>
         • SECRET_KEY can be anything but I recommend you use some random key generator since it will generate some random unpredictable key you can use to sign sensitive information with.
     • npm install
     • npm start
   • Terminal 2, run
     • cd MyMedJournal/client
     • npm install
     • npm start