APIs and Microservices Projects - Exercise Tracker & All of the API and Microservices section needs updating

https://www.freecodecamp.org/learn/apis-and-microservices/apis-and-microservices-projects/exercise-tracker

Describe your problem and how to reproduce it: My project was done and made correctly, but because of the user story passing requirements i had to spend over 40 extra hours to pass this thing

Why? Because the test wanted the information in fcc’s specific order even though I followed the example project and was identical to it, it wasn’t passing because i had to magically guess the special order fcc wanted me to put the return json information in

same thing for the log, same thing for adding exercise info it was ridiculous

i had to play the guessing game to figure out what special order they wanted it in until finally after hours of googling someone showed the right order for the info to be displayed

Add a Link to the page with the problem: https://www.freecodecamp.org/learn/apis-and-microservices/apis-and-microservices-projects/exercise-tracker

Recommended fix, suggestions (how would you update it?): First off, according to the user stories, the sample project shown shouldn’t pass by those standards because I followed the sample project exactly and had the same output results. But it didnt work, what I’m say is it isn’t clear what you guys want in the requirements to pass.

THIS IS YOUR PROJECT’S OUTPUT: http://prntscr.com/syfaor THIS IS MY PROJECT’S OUTPUT: http://prntscr.com/syfb7h

MY output passes, but when I followed the FCC Project output, it failed, I had my output exactly like your sample project output had it, that is for the /add exercises. What drove me insane is, how was I supposed to guess the order you wanted that output in??? I got lucky and after a load of googling I found someone who had the same issue and showed the correct order to put the output in.

I had my project output the same as same project but it didn’t work, post request part of my code, the output had to be something like username, description, duration, userId, date. Something like that, but in the project sample version it was userid, description, duration, date, username, but that didn’t work.

I literally finished the project 2 days ago but had to spend an extra 2 days troubleshooting only to come to the conclusion it had to be in some odd specific order that wasnt told to me.

I know I am coming off mad right now but I love your site and what you’ve done for me to help me learn, which is why I donate every month for you guys, its just this section in particular needs to be updated in my opinion.

Its outdated and glitch is horrible, it was down for like 1-2 days. Also the code like I said it is outdated, not a huge deal since I was able to figure it out but annoying, and I mean this for the entire section, you constantly get deprecation warnings which I need to fix but its not a huge deal like I said, only annoying. Also my main issue is just be more clear on what is wanted and needed to be done.

https://www.freecodecamp.org/learn/apis-and-microservices/basic-node-and-express/get-query-parameter-input-from-the-client

This talks about “app.route(path).get(handler).post(handler)” but it wasn’t clear and only confused me, I didn’t have to use app.route to pass at all so I didn’t understand why it was there or how to exactly use this chain it just was confusing to me overall and not clear. Also why put that there? Why not put that where it is supposed to be, which is here: https://www.freecodecamp.org/learn/apis-and-microservices/basic-node-and-express/get-data-from-post-requests

MongoDB/Mongoose section has these issues too, just overall.

Main takeaways since my post became a messy one now:

• Be more clear on what is wanted in every challenge, look at the HTML/CSS/Javascript sections, I think those were FCC’s shining points, they were so detailed and perfectly easy to follow for newbies like me.

• Don’t just tell me to use stuff like app.route(path).get(handler).post(handler): https://www.freecodecamp.org/learn/apis-and-microservices/basic-node-and-express/get-query-parameter-input-from-the-client Show me how to use this correctly, I was so confused, most of this section I had to Google and figure it out on my own, which is good for self reliance and troubleshooting, no doubt, these things helped my troubleshooting skills skyrocket but this was hair pulling.

• https://www.freecodecamp.org/learn/apis-and-microservices/mongodb-and-mongoose/install-and-set-up-mongoose This challenge had us setup a URI for mongo connection, I was so confused on why it wasn’t working, it said replace the word “password” with your actual password so I had this <mypassword> inside the URI link, when it was supposed to be without the ‘<>’, but that wasn’t clear and threw me off.

• I can go on but I have passed the whole section and forgot a few things that had annoyed me, but the main takeaway is maybe dumb it down a bit for people like me who are pretty dumb LOL, It seems this section was a bit rushed with the challenge descriptions, they weren’t detailed, but I’ve noticed this since the React section and on, I have gotten into the habit of watching video tutorials on the subject and then doing the FCC challenges so I fully get all the info because the FCC challenge descriptions aren’t detailed enough like they were in HTML/CSS/Javascript.

[eoamegassi]

Hi @scissorsneedfoodtoo, I encountered the same issues as @Symbolistic. I spent 4 days trying to guess the fields that the test software wanted. I eventually found them by testing the example application, however the test number 5 (ie log without filters) does not pass. I realized that the verification software was not doing it.

Screenshots Validation console.log’s with called endpoints and sent data

[scissorsneedfoodtoo]

@richardtorres314, the screenshots you posted look correct. The ones from the original poster were due to a bug I accidentally introduced to the Glitch example while updating the project to work with Mongo Atlas rather than MLab. It was fixed a little while ago.

Also, the example at https://nonstop-pond.glitch.me/ should be working again. You should be able to visit https://nonstop-pond.glitch.me/api/exercise/users and see the output.

Could you post a link to your project so we can take a look?