Agora

Academic collaboration platform for St. Cloud State University students — a private, university-only space to ask questions, share resources, and connect with classmates.

Live: web-production-48b9b.up.railway.app

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What is Agora?

Agora is a campus-exclusive social platform restricted to verified SCSU students (@stcloudstate.edu emails). It replaces the scattered use of Discord, GroupMe, and Reddit for academic help by providing one unified space with:

• A Questions Forum for course-specific Q&A with accepted answers and reputation scoring
• A Resource Hub for sharing textbooks, notes, and study materials
• Study Groups with public/private membership and invite workflows
• Class Pages for course-scoped discussion
• Campus Events pulled live from Huskies Connect (SCSU's event platform)
• A social feed with posts, reposts, bookmarks, and following

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Tech Stack

Layer	Technology
Web framework	Flask 3.0 (Jinja2 templates, Blueprint routing)
Database	MySQL — designed and managed by the team, hosted on Railway
ORM	SQLAlchemy + PyMySQL
Auth	Flask-Login + Werkzeug password hashing
Styling	Tailwind CSS (CDN, no build step) + Heroicons (inline SVG)
Images	Pillow — server-side resize before base64 storage
Campus data	Huskies Connect Presence API (events, news, orgs)
Deployment	Railway (Flask + MySQL, Gunicorn)

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Project Structure

agora/
├── run.py                  # App entry point
├── config.py               # Config (env vars, DB URI)
├── requirements.txt
├── Procfile                # Railway: gunicorn run:app
├── app/
│   ├── __init__.py         # create_app(), blueprints, context processors
│   ├── models.py           # All SQLAlchemy models
│   ├── utils.py            # Helpers: timeago, inject_globals, enrich_posts
│   └── blueprints/
│       ├── auth.py         # Register, login, logout (SCSU email gate)
│       ├── main.py         # Home feed
│       ├── posts.py        # Create, like, repost, bookmark posts
│       ├── profile.py      # View + edit profile, avatar/banner upload
│       ├── forum.py        # Q&A forum — problems, answers, accepted answers
│       ├── resources.py    # Resource sharing + borrow requests
│       ├── classes.py      # Class pages + enrollment
│       ├── groups.py       # Study groups (public/private, invites, requests)
│       ├── events.py       # Huskies Connect integration (events, news, orgs)
│       ├── messages.py     # Direct messages
│       ├── notifications.py# Notification feed
│       ├── bookmarks.py    # Saved posts
│       ├── follow.py       # Follow/unfollow users
│       └── settings.py     # Account settings
├── templates/
│   ├── base.html           # Root layout with sidebar navigation
│   ├── components/         # right_sidebar.html, post_card.html, etc.
│   └── ...
└── static/
    └── css/styles.css

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Key Features

Authentication

• Registration restricted to @stcloudstate.edu email addresses
• Password hashing via Werkzeug; session management via Flask-Login

Questions Forum

• Post academic questions; multiple users can answer
• Question author marks one answer as accepted
• Upvotes on questions and answers contribute to user reputation

Resource Sharing

• Upload references to textbooks, notes, past exams
• Borrow request workflow (pending → approved/declined)

Study Groups

• Public groups (join instantly) or private groups (request to join)
• Admin invites members by @username
• Single admin per group; admin transfer and auto-promotion on admin leave

Campus Events Sidebar

• Live data from Huskies Connect — upcoming events with images, dates, locations
• Campus news and student organizations from the same API
• 15-minute server-side cache; fully automatic

Profile

• Avatar and banner photo upload (Pillow resizing, stored as base64 in MySQL)
• Bio, major, academic year
• Reputation score displayed on profile

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Running Locally

git clone https://github.com/Agora-Connect/Agora.git
cd Agora
python -m venv venv
source venv/bin/activate
pip install -r requirements.txt
# create a .env file with DATABASE_URL and SECRET_KEY
flask run

Required environment variables:

Variable	Description
DATABASE_URL	MySQL connection string (mysql://user:pass@host:port/db)
SECRET_KEY	Flask session secret

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Deployment (Railway)

• Procfile runs Gunicorn: web: gunicorn run:app
• runtime.txt pins the Python version
• Database tables are auto-created at startup via db.create_all()
• Set DATABASE_URL and SECRET_KEY as Railway environment variables

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Database

The MySQL database schema is fully designed and maintained by the team. See the database repository for the complete schema, queries, indexes, transactions, and application scripts.

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Organization

Repository	Purpose
Agora	This repo — production Flask application
database	MySQL schema, queries, indexes, transactions, MongoDB component
docs	Design documents, ER diagram, normalization, domain specification

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License

MIT License — see LICENSE for details.