Practice Dashboard

A task management dashboard built with Express 5, TypeScript, and PostgreSQL.

Tech Stack

• Runtime: Node.js + TypeScript (via tsx)
• Framework: Express 5
• Database: PostgreSQL with pg (node-postgres)
• Validation: Zod 4
• Frontend: Vanilla HTML/CSS/JS (served separately)

Project Structure

├── database/
│   ├── pool.ts          DB connection pool
│   └── queries.ts       SQL query functions
├── routes/
│   └── tasksRouter.ts   Express route handlers for /api/tasks
├── src/
│   ├── schemas/
│   │   └── schema.ts    Zod validation schemas
│   └── server.ts        Express app entry point
├── test_routes.bat      API endpoint test script
├── tsconfig.json
└── package.json

Setup

1. Install dependencies

npm install

2. Environment variables

Create a .env file in the project root:

DB_USER=your_db_user
DB_HOST=localhost
DB_DATABASE=your_db_name
DB_PASSWORD=your_db_password
DB_PORT=5432
PORT=3000

3. Start the server

npm start        # starts with tsx
npm run dev      # starts with file-watch mode (auto-restart on changes)

Server runs at http://localhost:3000.

API Endpoints

GET /

Health check. Returns "server is running".

GET /api/tasks

Fetch tasks with optional filters and pagination.

Query parameters:

Param	Type	Default	Description
name	string	""	Filter by assignee (ILIKE)
priority	string	—	Filter by priority
page	number	1	Page number
limit	number	3	Items per page (max 100)

Response:

{
  "tasks": [ ... ],
  "meta": {
    "currentPage": 1,
    "limit": 3,
    "totalTasks": 10,
    "totalPages": 4
  }
}

POST /api/tasks

Create a new task.

Body:

{
  "title": "Task title",
  "assigned_to": "Person name",
  "priority": "low",
  "status": "pending",
  "due_date": "2026-07-15"
}

PATCH /api/tasks/:id

Update one or more fields of a task.

Body: Any subset of title, assigned_to, priority, status, due_date.

Running Tests

test_routes.bat

The script:

• Auto-starts the server if not running
• Tests all 4 routes (GET, POST, PATCH, error cases)
• Reports pass/fail counts
• Exits with code 0 on success, 1 on failure

Scripts

Command	Description
npm start	Start server with tsx
npm run dev	Start server with file watching
.\test_routes.bat	Run API endpoint tests