In this module, you begin developing the "Second Chance" back-end application. You learn about the application for the project in a walk-through video and get a high-level perspective by reading about its architecture and requirements in the project overview. In the first of two labs in the module, you develop a GitHub user story template and subsequent user stories for the application’s development. In the second lab, you will apply your skills to set up the NoSQL MongoDB database that provides the data and data management for the application.

In this module, you develop back-end APIs and services in three labs. In the first lab, you will create the API for handling secondChance Items. The API includes retrieving secondChanceItems from the database, fetching an item by its ID, adding an item to the secondChance database, modifying an item in the secondChance database, and deleting an item from the database. You configure the secondChanceItems route in the main Express application. In the second lab, you develop the search function API, including functionality to filter by different item attributes. You also integrate the search route into the Express application. In the third lab, you will develop an Express server to perform sentiment analysis using an NPM package that provides functionality for natural language processing.

In this module, there are four labs. In three of the labs, you complete the development of three APIs in the back end to handle registration, login, and updates to the user profile securely. In the fourth lab, you integrate the front end (provided to you) with the back end. Then, you test the back end's functionality from the front end's perspective.

In the two labs in this module, you will work to containerize and deploy your application. The first lab presents some CI/CD practices using linting with GitHub Actions to ensure the code meets coding standards. In the second lab, you will deploy MongoDB, the back-end server using Kubernetes, and the front-end server using IBM Code Engine.

In this module, you submit your final project for evaluation. A peer will evaluate your application and you will evaluate one of theirs. A rubric provides a list of criteria for assessment. The rubric also gives point values depending on the completeness of the criteria.