I am starting the backend module and have no idea how to do any of the starting tasks

Backend Development
1

here is what I am doing… I cloned the recommended repository on GitHub but only got teh readme in my new project. After that I have no clue what any of those tasks mean. Is there a spot that explains how to complete those tasks?

2

The challenge page explains the task. What specifically do you not understand?

It may be easier in the beginning to use the Replit links instead of the Github repos.

For the challenge, you linked to.

  1. Inside the directory created when you cloned the repo open up a terminal and run npm i.

  2. Open up the package.json file.

  3. Add an author property and give it a value author: "some name", (it’s an object so remember the properties are comma separated).

  4. In the terminal run npm start.

  5. Submit the localhost link http://localhost:3000

3

I do not understand how to locally clone the repo in github. Is it possible to clone the github repo so I can work on it on the github website?

I have never used github or any of this but from what I can gather it seems you can make a local clone on your machine, but I would like to have a clone I can work on on github website… It seems there is some bash commands needed when working with github on desktop, I dont know bash or kind of terminal commands etc.

I am completely new to all of this.

4

I would suggest you just use the Replit link

https://replit.com/github/freeCodeCamp/boilerplate-npm

and not worry about using GitHub for now.

No, you can’t run Node.js on Github, you can edit the files directly on Github but you still need a Node server to run the code. Also, editing code directly on Github is very suboptimal for anything but simple text editing.

I would suggest you search for information about Git, GitHub, and local development. It will be a lot in the beginning so don’t worry if it’s all just a bit too much information at first. It will take time to get comfortable with a “real” local development workflow.

Again, use Replit for now and focus on the task at hand.

5

Got it. So I have since switched to Replit, but I cannot find the live app link to submit my work. I found this previous post: How to submit repl.it to Freecodecamp?

However, when I run the app, there is no miniature browser with a link that I can copy from Replit. Do you know how I get the live app link for submission?

6

The project runs when I click the replit link, however if I stop the project and run it again, or if I put my author key in and try to run it again here is the console message

npm install
npm ERR! code EJSONPARSE
npm ERR! file /home/runner/boilerplate-npm-1/package.json
npm ERR! JSON.parse Failed to parse json
npm ERR! JSON.parse Unexpected string in JSON at position 53 while parsing '{
npm ERR! JSON.parse     "name": "fcc-learn-npm-package-json",'
npm ERR! JSON.parse Failed to parse package.json data.
npm ERR! JSON.parse package.json must be actual JSON, not just JavaScript.

npm ERR! A complete log of this run can be found in:
npm ERR!     /home/runner/.npm/_logs/2022-03-02T02_26_44_108Z-debug.log
1 Like
7

Please link to your Replit.

The error is usually because of incorrect formatting. One guess is you are missing a comma between the properties (think of it as an object with key/value pairs).

8

Click the “Use our replit starter project” link again to create a replit project from scratch again. Please note that you should not change the project name which is automatically created (usually boilerplate-express-x) or any other file name. Your project should work now after clicking on “run”. Regarding author key, there might be an issue of missing commas, apostrophes etc. in the package.json file where you edited the author values.

9

I have just started this same backend section and ran into a problem where it was giving me an error on repl.it. On line 3, I typed “author” : “Me” and forgot to put the comma to end the line. Once I did, that fixed the error. Good luck to anyone else!