Database & API Design

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Database Structure

Standalone Entities

Author

Field	Type	Notes
authorUID	String	Primary Key
firstName	String
middleName	String	Nullable
lastName	String
dateOfBirth	Date
hometown	String
country	String

Publisher

Field	Type	Notes
publisherUID	String	Primary Key
name	String
location	String

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Dependent Entities

Book

Field	Type	Notes
iSBN	String	Primary Key / UID
title	String
authorIDs	String	FK → Author
publishYear	Int
publisherUIDs	String	FK → Publisher
locale	String	e.g. "en", "fr"

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API Routes

Base URL: https://{backend_url}:{port}/api

Books

GET /api/books
POST /api/books/add
PUT /api/books/<isbn>
DELETE /api/books/<isbn>

routes below don't exist but was in original plan
GET /api/books?search=%s&lang=en&publish_year>{date}
GET /api/books?limit=%d&page=%d

Authors

GET /api/authors

routes below don't exist but was in original plan
GET /api/authors?search=%s
GET /api/authors?limit=%d&page=%d

Publishers

GET /api/publishers

routes below don't exist but was in original plan
GET /api/publishers?search=%s
GET /api/publishers?limit=%d&page=%d

Import Books

GET /books/import?url=<wikipedia_url>

Example Request

GET https://{backend_url}:{port}/api/books?search="lang=en,publish_year=>2018-5-2"

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Request Flow

User clicks button on Frontend
        │
        ▼
Frontend sends GET request to backend
        │   GET {backend_url}/api/books
        ▼
[Anthony] Flask Route calls DBAPI.GetBooks()
        │   
        ▼
[Brian]  PyMongo runs db.books.find() against MongoDB
        │
        ▼
[Backend] Results serialized to JSON
        │
[Anthony] Flask Returns JSON to frontend
        │
        ▼
React renders the book list

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Search Query Parsing

Search is handled on the client-side in React. Then the frontend fetches all teh books from the GET /api/books and filters by title using JS Array.filter()