NewsPanda Proxy-Server

Update: check out the live app here 🚀

🧰 Tech Stack

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🗺️ Overview

• This backend project serves as a Proxy Server for NewsPanda web application.
• Direct data fetch request from NewsPanda website to NewsAPI server falls under Cross-site request category. The request will hit the server but browser will block the response due to CORS(cross-origin resource sharing) protection....
• Since NewsAPI don't need corresponding user credentials from Browser profile to be tied with request body, we can bypass the CORS issue using a proxy server.
• Request made by a server (Proxy Server on Render in our case) is seen as an interaction by a remote machine, hence Browser does not automatically ties user credentials related to NewsAPI and therefore CORS is not enforced. This allows us to successfully retrieve data from NewsAPI website.

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🛠️ Architecture

• The project is a lightweight Express-based Proxy server that handles client request for news data.
• Axios API is used for communicating with Newsapi server based on the dynamic query parameters received from frontend.
• CORS middleware is configured to grant secured access to NewsPanda frontend, enabling it to communicate with the proxy server without browser-side CORS restrictions. After server receives a request, CORS middleware updates response headers such as Access-Control-Allow-Origin, Access-Control-Allow-Methods, Access-Control-Allow-Headers, and then lets the route handler handle next.

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✨ Features

• API keys are encapsulated using Environmental variables via dotenv to avoid accidental exposure in source code or public repositories.
• Data fetch algorithm is wrapped in an Error handling structure to account for unexpected errors.

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🌍 Deployment

• Frontend: Github Pages
• Backend: Render

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📎 Related Repositories

• Frontend: NewsPanda Frontend

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📛 Badges Credit

• shields.io for dynamic badge generation
• inttter/md-badges for curated badge styles and inspirations