NodeJS Store System – Introduction

During the creation of my Produce Code PLU Database, I was making use of JavaScript Objects to hold the data needed for the project. This data at the time included the Item Code, Item Category, and Item Name – perfect for a code lookup tool! But I got wondering – could you sort out the data by category using an array method? And upon realizing that I indeed could, I started writing code that could easily sort out large amounts of JavaScript Objects by category, which made it easier to add even more data since it would be even easier to browse through. Within a couple of days, I had code that ran through all the JavaScript Objects that had all the item information, which now included filepaths to product images, pricing, tax information, unit of measurement information (each, or by weight), and if the item would be sold at a feature retail price. I also used this code base to build a point-of-sale system which would use another array method to calculate costs – including taxes.

All of this programming happened in a handful of hours, which is good – except it didn’t seem like as big of a challenge as it could be. It also wasn’t something that could be scaled across multiple hypothetical retail store locations very easily as it was all written in client-side JavaScript. So, with scaleability in mind, I decided to take this small retail store application and turn it into a Full-Stack NodeJS MongoDB application – one which held item data which would be used to populate a store website, but also allowed people to use that website to place an order for pickup, allowed a staff member to select the items ordered and prepare them for pickup, as well as other store functions such as signage creation.

This project is too big to describe in a single post, so stay tuned – lots more is coming!

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