First of all, there were two main reasons why I have decided to write the RealGolf.Games API.
The first one being that I found serious security issues in the current code which had to be fixed.
The second one is that I want to write a desktop and mobile app, so I would save time by writing an API that both could use.

The Why

Motivation

One of the key drivers for the API’s development was the need to address certain vulnerabilities in the earlier implementation. Like many first-time projects, the original code had some security flaws due to inexperience with authentication best practices. Addressing these issues was crucial for protecting user data and maintaining trust.

Another motivation was efficiency: by creating an API, I could ensure that both desktop and mobile applications would consume the same data, reducing duplication and inconsistencies in the system.

Lessons Learned

The biggest takeaway from this phase was understanding the importance of robust authentication practices. Mistakes in earlier implementations taught me valuable lessons about using secure tokens for user validation instead of relying on potentially insecure identifiers.

These learnings set the stage for a fresh approach to the project, prompting a complete restructuring.

Version 4.0.0

API first try

As said before I set up a new repo using turborepo and started writing the API, what I did think about was how to structure an API, as you may know for a RESTful API you have to use POST, GET; DELETE and PATCH and if you have to PUT, well I didn’t so I started writing the API using only POST and GET, POST to do anything that modifies data and GET to just get the data. After I have finished that I wanted to release version 1 of the API.

Website first try

After I had released version 1.0.0 of the API, I started writing the Website using SvelteKit and after some time and a few YouTube tutorials later I stumbled over the term REST API and then I decided to rewrite the whole API this time using a RESTful approach.
So I stopped the web development and started with the RESTful API which now is v1.1.0

RESTful API

So why did I want to rewrite the whole API even though I just finished it 2 weeks ago?

Well I had many paths that were just unnecessary, I had a path for deleting, another for updating and one for creating and getting data from the database, well as you may know if you are familiar with REST is that you should you the different operations for that.

So I deleted all API routes and started over again which took about 1 Month.

Website second try

While I was writing the new API I found out about shadcn-svelte and I knew I had to use that for the frontend just because it would save me a lot of time writing all the styles.

So I started a new web project using shadcn svelte, which I am still working on until this day.

Future plans

At the end of this blog post, I would like to talk about what will happen next.

I will finish the website and release v4.0.0 of the website.
I will write some internal tools which help control everything easier
And then at the end for now I will add a forum page for Feature requests and bug reports but also so you can help each other.

The Why and How of RealGolf.Games API Development