API Exercise Tracker can't figure out how to log

Curriculum Help
1

Hey there,

I’m struggling with the exercise tracker log.
Basically I know how to retreive the data for a user, how to retrieve the data for exercises of that user but I can’t figure out hot to put everything in the res.json and fulfill user story 5 and 6.

Plus I’ve no idea how to limit the search as asked from user story 7.

my replit https://replit.com/@Eidan78/boilerplate-project-exercisetracker#server.js

live version https://boilerplate-project-exercisetracker.eidan78.repl.co

Any help will be really really appreciated.

2

It looks like you defined two separate, unconnected, schema: one for user and another for exercise. But then, there’s no way to connect a user to this person’s exercises. I defined one schema for user but this User schema includes an array to store this user’s exercises. Something like

user : {
 name: String,
exercises:[ {description:String, duration: Number, date: Date} ]
}

When you add a new user, you start with an empty exercise array. When you add a new exercise for the existing user, you find this user, add new exercise to the exercise array, and save this user back.

For pulling out a user’s log of exercises, you need to find a way to retrieve data in array property of a model. Among different ways, I used an aggregate operation because it is the first way I found to do the job.

3

I just completed this challenge. It gave me a really hard time!

I agree with @twotani that you need to think about your schema. If you look at the data returned by freeCodeCamp for a user’s logs, you will notice that the logs are objects nested in the log array. I found the following resource very helpful in understanding this.

https://mongoosejs.com/docs/subdocs.html#subdocuments-versus-nested-paths

Once you have the Schema redefined, it should be relatively easy to get all logs for a given user as the data returned for the log array will already be nested.

For the next challenge, filtering by dates and limiting the data, I struggled for a couple of days trying to figure out how to filter the query, but I ended up giving up and instead requested the full document (for the given params._id) and used javascript functions to craft the response.

Hope this helps!

4

Thank you very much. I’ve changed the schema for the user, now I’ve to understand how to update it’s data and add info to the log array… :roll_eyes:

5

Thank you very much!

6

ok…thanks to your help I just miss the filtering part now. “just” :smiley:

7

Here’s a great article, by Nick Karnik, that complements the information covered in the course.
https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/introduction-to-mongoose-for-mongodb-d2a7aa593c57/

Towards the end of the article, you will find the following sample syntax for filtering a query. This is what I tried to implement but ended up going a different, much less elegant, route. Though, if you’re retrieving a single doc from Mongo from a known user id, this is a bit overkill. On the other hand, if you pull it off, you save yourself a lot of coding to craft the response expected in the FCC test.

UserModel.find()                   // find all users
         .skip(100)                // skip the first 100 items
         .limit(10)                // limit to 10 items
         .sort({firstName: 1}      // sort ascending by firstName
         .select({firstName: true} // select firstName only
         .exec()                   // execute the query
         .then(docs => {
            console.log(docs)
          })
         .catch(err => {
            console.error(err)
          })

I also recommend watching the tutorial in FCC’s YouTube channel, by the same person who authored the article.

https://youtu.be/o3ka5fYysBM

Good luck!

8

Hey!

Thank you very much!
I did it!!!

This is my filter solution:


// Check if there is a limit in query
      if (req.query.limit) {
        data.exercises = data.exercises.slice(0, req.query.limit);
      }

      // Check if there is a date filter in query

      if (req.query.from || req.query.to) {
        let fromDate = new Date(0);
        let toDate = new Date();

        if (req.query.from) {
          fromDate = new Date(req.query.from);
        }
        if (req.query.to) {
          toDate = new Date(req.query.to);
        }
        fromDate = fromDate.getTime();
        toDate = toDate.getTime();

        data.exercises = data.exercises.filter((session) => {
          let sessionDate = new Date(session.date).getTime();

          return sessionDate >= fromDate && sessionDate <= toDate;
        });
      }