Notes API

A production-ready REST API for managing notes with user authentication, built with FastAPI, SQLAlchemy, PostgreSQL, and JWT authentication. Fully Dockerized and deployable to AWS ECS Fargate.

Features

• 🔐 JWT Authentication - Secure user registration and login
• 📝 Notes CRUD - Create, read, update, delete notes
• 👤 User Isolation - Each user can only access their own notes
• 🐳 Fully Dockerized - Backend and database run in Docker containers
• ☁️ Cloud Deployable - Deploy Docker containers to AWS ECS Fargate
• ✅ Comprehensive Tests - 20 test cases covering all functionality

Tech Stack

• FastAPI - Modern Python web framework
• SQLAlchemy - ORM for database operations
• PostgreSQL - Production database
• JWT (python-jose) - Token-based authentication
• Passlib + Bcrypt - Password hashing
• Pytest - Testing framework
• Docker - Containerization

Quick Start

# Start both backend and PostgreSQL
docker-compose up -d

# View logs (both services)
docker-compose logs -f

# Access the API
open http://localhost:8000/docs

API Usage

1. Register & Login

Go to http://localhost:8000/docs (Swagger UI):

1. POST /auth/register → Register a user
2. POST /auth/login → Get your JWT token
3. Click 🔓 Authorize → Paste your token
4. Now you can use all the notes endpoints!

2. API Endpoints

Authentication (Public)

• POST /auth/register - Register a new user
• POST /auth/login - Login and get JWT token

Notes (Protected - Requires JWT)

• POST /notes/ - Create a note
• GET /notes/ - List all your notes
• GET /notes/{id} - Get a note by ID
• PUT /notes/{id} - Update a note
• DELETE /notes/{id} - Delete a note

Health

• GET /health - Health check

Running Tests

# Activate virtual environment
source .venv/bin/activate

# Run all tests (uses in-memory SQLite)
python -m pytest tests/ -v

All 20 tests should pass! ✅

Configuration

Configure via environment variables or .env file:

DATABASE_URL="postgresql://postgres:postgres@postgres:5432/notes"
SECRET_KEY="your-secret-key-here"  # Generate with: openssl rand -hex 32
ALGORITHM="HS256"
ACCESS_TOKEN_EXPIRE_MINUTES=30

Deployment to AWS ECS

Architecture:

• Backend: ECS Fargate (Docker container)
• Database: RDS PostgreSQL (managed service, not a container)
• Image Registry: ECR

Deployment Steps:

1. Create RDS PostgreSQL database and note the connection endpoint
2. Build and push Docker image to ECR

   docker build -t notes-api .
   docker tag notes-api:latest YOUR_ACCOUNT.dkr.ecr.REGION.amazonaws.com/notes-api:latest
   docker push YOUR_ACCOUNT.dkr.ecr.REGION.amazonaws.com/notes-api:latest

3. Create ECS cluster (Fargate) and task definition using your ECR image
4. Set environment variables in task definition:
   • DATABASE_URL=postgresql://user:pass@rds-endpoint:5432/notes
   • SECRET_KEY=your-secure-key-here
5. Configure security groups (ECS → RDS on port 5432, Internet → ECS on port 8000)
6. Deploy ECS service with desired task count

Note: Local dev uses docker-compose (both backend + database containers). AWS production uses ECS + RDS (backend container + managed database).

Project Structure

notes-api/
├── app/
│   ├── main.py          # FastAPI application
│   ├── api/v1/
│   │   ├── auth.py      # Authentication endpoints
│   │   └── notes.py     # Notes endpoints
│   ├── models/          # SQLAlchemy models
│   ├── schemas/         # Pydantic schemas
│   ├── crud/            # Database operations
│   └── core/
│       ├── config.py    # Settings
│       ├── db.py        # Database config
│       └── security.py  # JWT & password hashing
├── tests/
│   └── test_notes.py    # API tests
├── Dockerfile
├── docker-compose.yml
└── requirements.txt

Security Notes

• Passwords are hashed with bcrypt
• JWT tokens expire after 30 minutes (configurable)
• All note endpoints require authentication
• Users can only access their own notes
• ⚠️ IMPORTANT: The default SECRET_KEY in config.py is for demo/development only. For production deployments, generate a secure key using openssl rand -hex 32 and set it as an environment variable

License

MIT License - Feel free to use this project for learning and development!