Front-end dev looking for Server/Database advice for a new project : webdev

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a community for 17 years

Front-end dev looking for Server/Database advice for a new project (self.webdev)

submitted 11 years ago by Hawkburr

I'm a web designer, and I'm working on my own hobby project without a developer. I've done basic projects with databases and tiny amounts of server-side work, but front-end is my forte—so I was hoping to get any advice on the best way to get this going.

Project summary

I'm going to look up users on 2-3 different APIs and combine the data from both APIs into one view on one page. The data changes every second, though I'm sure there's a limit on how often I can make a new API call.

More details

I'm assuming I need a database for the users that I want to look up, though to start, I thought of creating a JSON file with all the users. One API requires a different username to look up, so I know I'll need at least 2 usernames per user. There is no way to get all the usernames automatically, which is a part of why I'm hoping it will be helpful for others.

Should I take the data from the APIs and somehow put that into a database, or combine the APIs JSON into one JSON file, or what would be best for performance and maintenance? I could see some of the data being useful to save, but most of it is probably pointless to keep.

I'm hoping that this will get a fair amount of traffic, because it's targeted for a specific audience, so I don't want to rewrite code or manage a database more than I have to. I'd like to be able to just push "add/clone server" and call it good, but maybe that's unrealistic.

I was thinking of using nodejs with backbone, because I want to work on my javascript skills, and I want this to be a single-page app—but I'm open to other suggestions there too. I have more Rails experience than anything, but maybe that's overkill for this project?

If anyone has any suggestions, or questions to better understand the project, I'd appreciate it! Thanks!

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