DEV Community: Youssef Allali

Earn more storage space on Dropbox for free

Youssef Allali — Mon, 07 Feb 2022 01:19:38 +0000

What is Dropbox?

Dropbox is a file hosting service operated by the American company Dropbox, Inc.

How much Storage space do I have?

Depending on the type of subscription, Dropbox offers you different amounts of space.
We're here to talk about the free plan which is what you get when you first create a Dropbox account.
With this plan, all you get is 2GB, which is, in most cases, not sufficient in case you depend a lot on cloud storage services, or you prefer to store your documents and data on the cloud.

How can I increase my storage space?

Glad you asked, Dropbox itself will ask you to go premium and tempt you into buying more space with a Dropbox Plus plan!

Whilst paying for a premium subscription will grant you access to 2TB of storage space and other advantages, there's a workaround to get up to 16 GB of storage for free.

Just visit Dropbox website on your browser and head to your account settings and then choose "refer a friend" from the tabs. Here's the link to it in case you couldn't find your way there: "Referals", after that you'll read :

Get up to 16 GB for referrals
Earn 500 MB for every friend who installs the Dropbox desktop app—and your friend will get 500 MB too. ...

Next thing to do is copy the invite link Dropbox provides
Share that link with your friends and family and you'll earn 500MB for each person clicking your link and signing up for a Dropbox account. and they also get a bonus of 500 MB.

Extra out of charge 500 MB

If you don't have Dropbox app installed on your device yet or you just want to test it out, use my referral link https://www.dropbox.com/referrals/AADxXRDPeFLUNQUWs2JaYYR627TXlpI7H3Y?src=global9 and you'll get extra 500, I get extra 500, everyone happy 😄 .

Final words

Don't hesitate to leave any questions you may have for me in the comments. I'll be pleased to reply and subscribe for more interesting content like this one.

Build a simple Node.js RESTful API

Youssef Allali — Sun, 09 May 2021 11:39:57 +0000

What is REST?
Prerequisites
Set up the workspace
Set up the database
Set up the routes
Set up the controller
Set up the server
Test the API
Conclusion
Final words

What is REST?

REST is an acronym for Representational State Transfer and it is a software architectural style which uses a subset of HTTP
RESTful APIs relies on HTTP verbs to perform four operations :
The GET (to read a resource), POST (to create and/or update a resource), and DELETE (to delete a resource)
RESTful APIs are defined with the following aspects :

A base URI, such as http://api.example.com/;

Standard HTTP methods (e.g., GET, POST, PUT, and DELETE);

Media types, such as application/json.

In this tutorial, we will learn how to create a RESTful API using Node.js.

Prerequisites

In order to follow along with this tutorial you will need

A Node.js environnement installed on your machine;
A text editor program or IDE (VS Code for example);
A mongoDB instance (here in this tutorial, we will be using the cloud database MongoDB Atals).
An API Client such as Postman to help us make HTTP requests and test our API server.

To avoid running into any compatibility issues, I will list the versions of programs and tools used in this tutorial :

Tool	Version	How to check
Node.js	v14.16.1	`node -v`
MongoDB Node.js driver	3.6 or later
express npm module	^4.17.1	`npm list express`
mongoose npm module	^6.0.10	`npm list mongoose`

Set up the workspace

Start the project

In this tutorial, we will be creating a todo list application that will let us create, read, update and delete tasks.

Before we begin, make sure you have Node.js installed, mongoDB Atlas instance working and Postman ready for the testing.

Now, open a terminal window (or CMD, on Windows) in a preferred location or use the following command to create a folder and set it as a workspace:

$ mkdir ./todo-list-api

$ cd ./todo-list-api

Now, it's time to start our application by typing the following command:

$ npm init -y

What it basically does is create a file named package.json that contains all the information about our project and its dependencies.

the -y parameter lets me skip filling informations about my project since I could modify these later in the package.json file.

Create necessary folders and files

Now, let's create the file that will contain our server script, we'll be naming it index.js since that's the default name (other conventional names can be app.js or server.js).

In the command line, type the command that will create a new empty file:

$ touch ./index.js

Next, let's add some folders and files via the following commands:

Create 3 separate folders "models", "routes", and "controllers" using the command $ mkdir controllers models routes

Create the empty files "controller.js", "routes.js" and "model.js" inside their respective folders "controller", "routes", and "model" $ touch ./controllers/controller.js ./models/model.js ./routes/routes.js

Set up the database

Now that we have our server ready, let's set up a database.

Install mongoose module

mongoose will be used to manage our MongoDB Atlas instance.

$ npm install mongoose --save

Define a schema

Open the file "model.js" and type the following code and then save it.

// model.js
const mongoose = require('mongoose');

const taskSchema = new mongoose.Schema({
  name: {
    type: String,
    required: 'Enter the name of the task'
  },
  date_created: {
    type: Date,
    default: Date.now
  },
  status: {
    type: [{
      type: String,
      enum: ['pending', 'ongoing', 'completed']
    }],
    default: ['pending']
  }
});

module.exports = mongoose.model('Tasks', taskSchema);

In the code above, we imported the mongoose module into our file and we created a model that defines the structure of our mongoDB collection.

Set up the routes

In Express, routing instructs the sever on how to respond to client request for a specific endpoint (URI) and a specific HTTP request method.

To do this, open the file "routes.js" and type the following code and then save it.

// routes.js
module.exports = (app) => {
  const todoList = require('../controllers/controller.js');

  app.route('/tasks')
    .get(todoList.listTasks)
    .post(todoList.createTask);

  app.route('/tasks/:taskId')
    .get(todoList.readTask)
    .put(todoList.updateTask)
    .delete(todoList.deleteTask);
};

In the code above, we defined two basic routes : "/tasks" and "/tasks/:taskId" with different methods; "/tasks" has the methods "GET" and "POST", while "/tasks/:taskId" has "GET", "PUT" and "DELETE".
As you can see, we also required the controller so each of the routes methods can call its respective handler function.

Set up the controller

open the file "controller.js" and type the following code and then save it.

// controller.js
const mongoose = require('mongoose');
const task = mongoose.model('Tasks');

exports.listTasks = (req, res) => {
  task.find({}, (err, task) => {
    if (err)
      res.send(err);
    res.json(task);
  });
};

exports.createTask = (req, res) => {
  const new_task = new task(req.body);
  new_task.save((err, task) => {
    if (err)
      res.send(err);
    res.json(task);
  });
};

exports.readTask = (req, res) => {
  task.findById(req.params.taskId, (err, task) => {
    if (err)
      res.send(err);
    res.json(task);
  });
};

exports.updateTask = (req, res) => {
  task.findOneAndUpdate({_id: req.params.taskId}, req.body, {new: true}, (err, task) => {
    if (err)
      res.send(err);
    res.json(task);
  });
};

exports.deleteTask = (req, res) => {
  task.remove({
    _id: req.params.taskId
  }, (err, task) => {
    if (err)
      res.send(err);
    res.json({ message: 'Task deleted' });
  });
};

In the code above, we defined 5 different functions for different actions:

listTasks lists our tasks;
createTask creates a new task;
readTask reads the content of a task;
updateTask updates the content of a task;
deleteTask deletes a task.

Each of these functions is exported in order to be used in our routes.

Note that each of these functions uses different mongoose methods such as find, findById, save, findOneAndUpdate and deleteOne.

Set up the server

In this section, we will be connecting our controller.js, database, the created models, body parser and the routes together and at the end, we will run our server and test it.

Install express module

Express will be used to create the server

$ npm install express --save

Start the server

Open the file "index.js" and follow the steps.

Essentially, what we will be doing is

Connect our database by adding a url to the mongoose instance connection (you can learn how to set up one by following this article);
Load the created model - task;
Register our created routes in the server.

Now, type the following code inside the file index.js and save it.
Note : Don't forget to replace the string in connectionUrl variable with your Atlas connection string.

// index.js
const express = require('express');
const app = express();
const port = process.env.PORT || 3000;
const mongoose = require('mongoose');
const task = require('./models/model.js');

app.use(express.json());
app.use(express.urlencoded({ extended: true }));

// mongoose instance connection url connection
mongoose.Promise = global.Promise;
// Replace the following with your Atlas connection string                                                                                                                                        
const connectionUrl = "mongodb+srv://<username>:<password>@<clusterName>.mongodb.net/<databaseName>?retryWrites=true&w=majority";
mongoose.connect(connectionUrl, { 
    useNewUrlParser: true,
    useUnifiedTopology: true 
  }); 

//import routes
const routes = require('./routes/routes.js'); 

//register the route
routes(app);

app.listen(port, ()=> {
  console.log(`RESTful API server running on ${port}`);
});

Now, back to the terminal and type $ node ./index.js and if everything is fine, you'll see the message "RESTful API server running on 3000" printed to the console.

Test the API

Now that everything is connected, let’s test some of our routes with the the registered methods.

Launch Postman or use the web-based version (you'll need to set up an account, it's free).

In Postman, we will test our routes by making requests to their respective endpoints

Since there are no tasks nor tasklists in our database yet, get requests will return an empty array ([]) from the server. So the first thing we can do is create a task.

Create a task

In order to create a new task, let's make a POST request to the following http://localhost:3000/tasks

if you can't use Postman for some reason, you can always use the command line tool "curl".

$ curl --data-urlencode 'name=Do homework' http://localhost:3000/tasks

Delete a task

Now let's try to delete the task we have just created, in order to do that, let's make a DELETE request to the following http://localhost:3000/tasks/<taskId>
Note that we have to replace the :taskId placeholder with the task identified _id we received from the last request.

Again, if you can't use Postman, use the command line tool "curl".

$ curl -X DELETE "http://localhost/<taskId>"

Conclusion

Congrats! you made a functioning RESTful API.
You may find the full code for this tutorial in this Github Repository.

Final words

Don't hesitate to leave any questions you may have for me in the comments. I'll be pleased to reply and subscribe for more interesting content like this one.

Earn more storage space on OneDrive for free

Youssef Allali — Fri, 07 May 2021 22:57:10 +0000

What is Onedrive?

OneDrive is a file hosting service and synchronization service offered by Microsoft for its users.

How much Strorage space do I have?

Depending on the type of your subscription, Microsoft offers you different amounts of space.
We're here to talk about the free plan which is what you get when you first create a Microsoft account (@outlook.com or @hotmail.com).
With this plan, all you get is 5GB, which is, in most cases, not sufficient in case you depend a lot on cloud storage services, or you prefer to store your documents and data up there.

How can I increase my storage space?

Glad you asked, Microsoft itself will ask you to go premium and push you into buying more space with a Microsoft 365 subscription!

Whilst paying for a premium subscription will open your access to 100 GB, 1TB or 6TB of storage space, there's a way to get up to 10 GB of free storage.

Open your Web based Onedrive and click on the Settings button and then to Options or simply click on this link "Manage Storage", after that you'll find a section called Your additional storage and the refereal bonus that says (0% acheived)

Next thing to do is click on Earn more that will pop up a window with different ways to share your referral link
Share that link with your friends and family and you'll earn 500MB for each person clicking your link and registering for Onedrive for the first time. and they also get a bonus of 500 MB.

Extra out of charge 500 MB

If you don't have a Microsoft account yet or want to use Onedrive for the first time, use my referral link https://onedrive.live.com?invref=62ae940e77f9bed2&invscr=90 and you'll get extra 500, I get extra 500, everyone happy 😄 .

Final words

Don't hesitate to leave any questions you may have for me in the comments. I'll be pleased to reply and subscribe for more interesting content like this one.

Express JS Hello World

Youssef Allali — Fri, 07 May 2021 05:21:36 +0000

Install NodeJS

First thing we need to do is prepare an environnement for Express to run.
We are going to install NodeJS and follow the installation instructions.

Set up a workspace and start a project

Once we have installed Node.js and Node Package Manager (NPM) which comes preinstalled with it on our machine, let's open up a terminal window (or CMD, on Windows) in the desired folder or use the following command to create a folder and use it as a workspace:

mkdir ./hello_world

cd ./hello_world

Now, we are ready to start our first application, to do that, type in the following command:

npm init -y

What it basically does is create a file named package.json that contains all the information about our project and its dependencies.
Just in case you're still wondering what NPM is, here's a brief definition:

npm is the pre-installed package manager for the Node.js server platform. It installs Node.js programs from the npm registry, organizing the installation and management of third-party Node.js programs

Install Express

Next, we need to install express module using NPM via the command:

npm install express --save

Now all we need is to create our main script, we'll be naming it index.js since that's the default name (other conventional names can be app.js or server.js).

We can create a new empty file from the terminal using the following command:

touch index.js

Let's open our newly created file in any IDE or text editor (Notepad, Notepad++, Atom ...) but I would recommend using a sophisticated IDE like VS Code and let's type in the following lines in order:

const express = require('express');

The first line would tell our app to import the module we are using (express).

const app = express();

This second line let us define express as a function

After that we need to define something called "a route" to the root of our website that will let us send an HTTP request to our server and GET a response that says Hello World!:

app.get('/', (req, res) => {
  res.send('Hello World!');
});

Last thing we need to do is instruct our app to be listening on a port, for example port 3000:

app.listen(3000)

Run the server app

Now let's head back to our terminal window and type in the following command which will compile our code and start our server.

node ./index.js

Check if it works

Finally, we can load http://localhost:3000/ in a browser to see the result.

Final words

Don't hesitate to leave any questions you may have for me in the comments. I'll be pleased to reply.

DEV Community: Youssef Allali

Earn more storage space on Dropbox for free

What is Dropbox?

How much Storage space do I have?

How can I increase my storage space?

Extra out of charge 500 MB

Final words

Build a simple Node.js RESTful API

Table Of Contents

What is REST?

Prerequisites

Set up the workspace

Start the project

Create necessary folders and files

Set up the database

Set up the routes

Set up the controller

Set up the server

Test the API

Create a task

Delete a task

Conclusion

Final words

Earn more storage space on OneDrive for free

What is Onedrive?

How much Strorage space do I have?

How can I increase my storage space?

Extra out of charge 500 MB

Final words

Express JS Hello World

Install NodeJS

Set up a workspace and start a project

Install Express

Run the server app

Check if it works

Final words