The Veterinarian Exercise

Exercise with Javalin and CRUD

As a computer science student, you’ve been engaged by a local veterinarian clinic, “Paws & Whiskers,” to develop a RESTful API that will help them manage their patient appointments and information. The clinic has specific requirements for GET methods to retrieve essential data.

Client: Paws & Whiskers Veterinary Clinic

Project Requirements:

1. Appointment Retrieval:
   • Create an endpoint to retrieve a list of upcoming appointments.
   • Implement an endpoint to retrieve details of a specific appointment by appointment ID.
2. Patient (Animal) Information:
   • Create endpoints to retrieve patient details, including medical history (e.g., allergies, medications, etc.) by patient ID.
   • Develop an endpoint to retrieve a list of all patients.
3. Endpoint Groups:
   • Organize routes into two endpoint groups: “Appointments” and “Patients.”
   • Set up the server so that all endpoints are under the path /api/vet/. https://javalin.io/documentation#configuration (For example, the endpoint to retrieve a list of all patients should be localhost:7071/api/vet/patients.)
   • Use path params and not query params for the endpoints.
4. Handlers:
   • Implement separate handlers (AppointmentHandler, PatientHandler) for each GET endpoint to manage the retrieval logic.
5. Data Structures:
   • Utilize Java Collections to manage appointment and patient data. No need to persist data to a database.
6. HTTP Methods:
   • All routes should use HTTP GET methods for retrieving information.
7. Response Format:
   • All endpoints should return JSON data, HTTP status codes and content type.
   • Use a http file to test the endpoints.
8. DTOs (Data Transfer Objects):
   • Create DTOs to facilitate data transfer between the client and server. A DTO that includes some of the patient’s and appointment’s information is sufficient.
9. Error Handling:
   • Make sure to return 404 when a patient or appointment is not found.
10. Extras but not optional:
    • Implement Javalin’s before() and after(). It could be used to log the requests and responses.
    • Implement attribute() method in your project to add a custom attribute to the context. That attribute could be used somewhere else in the project. https://javalin.io/documentation#context

Business Goals:

• Enable clinic staff to quickly access essential information about appointments and patients.
• Streamline the process of retrieving patient records and appointment details.
• Improve the efficiency of managing patient data through a RESTful API.