GetACat Backend

This is the backend of GetACat. I built this to provide data for the main website and external clients.
This backend service (BaaS) can be used as an independent service from the main website, meaning you can use it outside of the primary client application. (I primarily built this for portfolio purposes, not for daily production use.)

Click here 👉 to navigate to "How to Access"

Click here 👉 to navigate to "What's Inside"

🚶 How to Access

Here's the link 👉: https://getacat-backend.onrender.com

I'm hosting this with Render.com, so the API URL will be built like https://getacat-backend.onrender.com followed by the route path.

❗️ It can happen that the fetching is slow at first because I use the free version of Render.com. If the server is inactive for 15 minutes, it goes into sleep mode.

🚏 Here are the route endpoints.

The main route.

❗️ You can't access anything here because I didn't set an endpoint for this route.

https://getacat-backend.onrender.com

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Get all cat images.

https://getacat-backend.onrender.com/get-a-cat-image

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Cat details by name.
Replace :name with the desired cat breed.

https://getacat-backend.onrender.com/get-a-cat-info/:name

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Returns all breeds.

https://getacat-backend.onrender.com/get-a-cat-info-datail/get-all-names/

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Returns a specific property of a cat.
Replace :name with the desired cat breed.
Replace :detail with the desired property.

https://getacat-backend.onrender.com/get-a-cat-info-datail/:name/:datail

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Returns all of the properties.

https://getacat-backend.onrender.com/get-a-cat-info-datail/get-all-properties/

🎯 I used a rate limiter on every API endpoint. The intended client stores this data in SessionStorage.

📦 What's Inside

My goal was to build a backend for my GetACat website client. I chose Hono and Bun because I wanted to test and practise these frameworks.

📚 Tech Stack

• Bun:
  • TypeScript
  • Hono
  • hono-rate-limiter

🐈 About the Images

🖼 How Cat Images are Fetched (Fallback Strategy)

Originally, this project relied on Reddit's open URL-based solution (appending .json to subreddits and filtering with URL parameters). However, due to Reddit's API policy changes, this method was deprecated.

To keep the application running smoothly, I implemented a robust fallback strategy:

1. Primary Source (Imgur API): The app first attempts to fetch images using Imgur's public client token.
2. Fallback Source (TheCatAPI): If the Imgur fetch fails, the backend automatically switches to TheCatAPI. To ensure UI consistency, the fallback is configured to return exactly 66 cat images, matching Imgur's default response payload size.

🐈 About the Database

Instead of a traditional external database, the application utilizes a structured static cats.json file to store cat information.

• Coverage: Includes data for all mainstream and popular cat breeds.
• Content: Each entry contains key characteristics and major properties of the respective breed.
• Usage: This local dataset serves all API endpoints, except for the /get-a-cat-image rout

🌳 File tree

├── src 
│   ├── components
│   │   ├── images
│   │   │   ├── catImageFinder.ts
│   │   │   └── catImageFinder2.ts
│   │   ├── routes
│   │   │   ├── catImages.ts
│   │   │   ├── catInfo.ts
│   │   │   └── catInfoDetail.ts
│   │   ├── cats.json
│   │   └── rateLimiter.ts 
│   └── index.ts
├── .dockerignore
├── .gitignore
├── Dockerfile
├── README.md
├── bun.lock
├── package.json
└── tsconfig.json 

👨‍💻 Actual Development

To start development just clone this repository.

git clone https://github.com/6gDav/GetACat_Backend.git

Or download the ZIP.

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Start dev server with this command.

bun run dev

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Build the project.

bun run build

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May be needed to download all necessary dependencies.

bun install

🪪 License

This project is licensed under the MIT License - see the LICENSE file for details.