Issue 6: Subscription APIs — Create & Fetch User Subscriptions #119
Description
This issue introduces the core backend APIs for SubSentry that allow users to:
- Add new subscriptions
- Fetch their existing subscriptions
Together, these APIs form the foundation of the entire dashboard, enabling all future features such as UI listing, analytics, and email ingestion.
🔧 APIs to Implement
1️⃣ Create Subscription
POST /api/subscriptions
Allows a user to add a new subscription to the system.
2️⃣ Fetch Subscriptions
GET /api/subscriptions
Returns all subscriptions that belong to the currently authenticated user.
📌 Expanded Description
You will implement two user-scoped APIs that interact with the Subscription schema:
-
The POST API should:
- Accept subscription details
- Validate required fields
- Store the subscription in MongoDB
-
The GET API should:
- Retrieve subscriptions
- Ensure only the authenticated user’s data is returned
- Provide a clean and predictable response structure
Both APIs must strictly respect user data isolation.
🎯 Why this issue exists
- Establishes the backend foundation for the entire product
- Enables frontend dashboard development
- Teaches secure, user-scoped CRUD operations
- Encourages clean controller–route architecture
✅ Key Expectations
- Proper request validation for POST
- Clear separation of controller and route logic
- User-based filtering when fetching data
- Meaningful HTTP status codes and error messages
- Stable and readable JSON responses
🚫 What NOT to do
- ❌ Do NOT allow unauthenticated access
- ❌ Do NOT return subscriptions belonging to other users
- ❌ Do NOT trust arbitrary or hardcoded user IDs
- ❌ Do NOT mix analytics or frontend logic into this issue
- ❌ Do NOT over-fetch unnecessary fields
🧪 Testing Expectations
Contributors should be able to demonstrate:
- Successful subscription creation
- Fetching only their own subscriptions
- Correct handling of invalid or missing inputs
🏁 Outcome
After completing this issue:
- The backend will fully support subscription creation and retrieval
- The project will be ready for dashboard UI integration
- Contributors will have implemented real-world REST API patterns