RESTful Blog API with Express

Project roadmap

1. 01

   Set up the project

   ~1.5h

   Create a TypeScript project with Express, Prisma, Zod and tsx for development. Run PostgreSQL with Docker, initialize Prisma, and add a GET /health route. Configure strict TypeScript. Done when: the server starts, connects to the database, and /health returns 200.

2. 02

   Define the Prisma schema

   ~1.5h

   Model Author (name and email unique), Post (title, slug unique, body, published flag, dates and author), Tag (name unique) with a many-to-many relation to posts, and Comment (post, author name, body and date). Create the migration and a seed script with sample data. Done when: prisma migrate dev creates the tables, and the seed script fills them.

3. 03

   Build the CRUD routes

   ~2.5h

   Build routes for posts (list, get by slug, create, update and delete) and comments (list for a post, add and delete), with typed request and response shapes. Generate slugs from titles, unique per post. Identify the current author with a simple API key header for now, and only let a post's author update or delete it (403 otherwise). Return 201, 204, 404 and 409 correctly. Done when: all routes work with curl.

4. 04

   Validate input

   ~1.5h

   Write Zod schemas for every body and query string, and a generic middleware that validates and gives handlers the parsed, typed data. Return 400 with a list of field errors, and handle Prisma's known errors (such as a unique constraint) in one error handler that turns them into 409 or 404, never leaking internal details. Done when: invalid requests get clear 400 errors, and handlers only see valid, typed data.

5. 05

   Add pagination and filters

   ~1.5h

   Support GET /posts?tag=&author=&q=&published=&page=&pageSize= (with a maximum page size), returning items with the total count, and sort by date. Include each post's author name, tags and comment count in one query (using include and _count) instead of one query per post. Done when: filters combine correctly, and listing posts runs a small, fixed number of queries.

6. 06

   Write integration tests

   ~2h

   Write tests with Vitest (or Jest) and Supertest against a separate test database that is reset before each test file: creating and fetching posts with tags, slugs, permissions, validation errors, comments, filters and pagination, and 404s. Done when: the test suite passes.

Resources

• DocsPrisma documentation
• DocsPrisma: relations
• DocsExpress: routing
• DocsZod documentation
• Docssupertest