What will the back-end look like?

Architecture

• UI - React.js front-end using Apollo GraphQL queries & mutations
• API - Node.js server, exposing an Apollo GraphQL API
• Database - Neo4j (either hosted remotely or locally within a Docker container)

All three aspects of the application will be hosted within Docker containers for portability and ease of use.

What functionality does it need for MVP?

• React front-end
  • Queries
    • List all resources
    • List all concepts in a resource (with their nested relationships)
  • Mutations
    • Create a resource
    • Add a root concept (with a description)
    • Add nested concepts (with a description)
• Back-end
  • Exposes a GraphQL API for querying the database
    • Get all Resources
    • Get all the Concepts inside a Resource (recursively)
    • Get all the Concepts inside a Concept (recursively)
  • Exposes a GraphQL API for mutating the database
    • Create a Resource
    • Create a Concept
    • Create a Description
    • Link a Description to a Concept
    • Link a Concept to a Resource
    • Link a Concept to a Concept
  • Fills the database with seed data docker-compose run api npm run seedDb
  • Connects to the Neo4j database

What functionality might it need post-MVP?

• Add key-value pairs to edges (edge parameters) to store custom data about the link
  • Example: (Concept)-[CONTAINS (not examinable)]-(CONCEPT)
• Adjusting the query to filter according to CONTAINS parameter
  • Example: show ONLY examinable concepts
  • Versus showing ALL concepts
  • Is this supported by GraphQL? If not, how do we work around that?
• ? Making a Describable interface, which is implemented by Resource and Concepts
  • Instead of having messy bi-directional relations between Descriptions nodes and Resource / Concept nodes
  • If not, we could just store Resources' descriptions in a String

What's on the hit list?

Core

• [x] Figure out how to nest Concepts with GraphQL + Cypher