If fields are missing or something is wrong return a 400 Bad Request with a json payload

{"msg" : "what went wrong"}

If you set up the facilities that let the back end determine the user's authentication status that would be awesome.

Something like GET /user/{user_id}/posts
This will likely be used by Javascript to load and render the posts.

This will later have to be modified to handle privacy/sharing requirements

Will likely be used by JS to populate interface, but could also be used internally to pass an array of friends into a template for rending? So if you have code that handle the retrieval and then an actual resource that returns that as json that could work nice.

Friend Status:
Accepted
Pending - Other user has requested you as a friend you can reject/accept
Invite Sent - You have requested the other user to be your friend.

The HTML should go into controls/newPost.html this is loaded globally

If fields are missing or something is wrong return a 400 Bad Request with a json payload

{"msg" : "what went wrong"}

Used for creating a new post.