2nd Home

A full-stack boarding and housing marketplace platform connecting students with verified accommodation owners. Features role-based dashboards for Students, Owners, Verifiers, and Admins with real-time chat, booking management, payment processing, and a property verification workflow.

Features

👨‍🎓 Student

• Browse and search boarding listings with filters
• View boarding details with photos, amenities, and map location
• Send booking requests and manage bookings
• Chat with owners in real time
• Save favorite listings
• Rate and review properties

🏠 Owner

• Manage boarding listings (create, edit, delete) with image uploads
• Accept/reject booking requests
• Request property verification with availability scheduling
• View assigned verifier details (name, email, phone, photo)
• Track verification status with live countdown timers
• Dashboard with earnings, occupancy stats, and booking analytics

✅ Verifier

• Accept or reject verification assignments (15-minute response window)
• Conduct inspections by submitting checklist, photos, notes, and selfie
• Cancel accepted assignments (triggers red flag)
• View verification history including red-flagged items

🔧 Admin

• Full user management with role filtering
• Monitor and assign verifiers to pending verification requests
• View completed inspection reports with full details
• Unassign verifiers before they process a request
• Dashboard with analytics: user distribution, booking stats, revenue, and verification reports
• Export reports to Excel/CSV
• Notification panel with boarding reports and unread messages

Tech Stack

Layer	Technology
Frontend	React 19, TypeScript, Vite, Tailwind CSS v4, Framer Motion, React Router v7
Backend	Express, TypeScript, Mongoose, Zod
Database	MongoDB
Auth	JWT (JSON Web Tokens) + bcrypt
Payments	Stripe
Uploads	Cloudinary
Email	Nodemailer (SMTP or Ethereal test account in dev)
Icons	Lucide React

Prerequisites

• Node.js v18 or later
• MongoDB instance (local or Atlas)
• Stripe account (for payment features)
• Cloudinary account (for image uploads)

Setup

1. Clone & Install

git clone <repository-url>
cd 2nd-home
npm install

This installs dependencies for both frontend/ and backend/ via npm workspaces.

2. Environment Variables

Backend (backend/.env)

PORT=5000
MONGODB_URI=mongodb+srv://<user>:<password>@cluster.xxxxx.mongodb.net/<dbname>?retryWrites=true&w=majority
JWT_SECRET=<random-hex-string>
JWT_EXPIRES_IN=7d
FRONTEND_URL=http://localhost:5173
CLOUDINARY_CLOUD_NAME=<your-cloud-name>
CLOUDINARY_API_KEY=<your-api-key>
CLOUDINARY_API_SECRET=<your-api-secret>
STRIPE_SECRET_KEY=sk_test_...
# Optional — email for password reset
# EMAIL_HOST=smtp.gmail.com
# EMAIL_PORT=587
# EMAIL_USER=your@email.com
# EMAIL_PASS=<app-password>

MONGODB_URI and JWT_SECRET are required — the app crashes on startup if they are missing.

Frontend (frontend/.env)

VITE_API_BASE=http://localhost:5000
VITE_GOOGLE_MAPS_KEY=<your-google-maps-api-key>

The frontend .env file is optional for basic functionality — only VITE_API_BASE is needed to point to the backend.

3. Run in Development

# Start both frontend and backend concurrently
npm run dev

# Or start individually:
npm run dev:frontend   # Vite dev server on port 3000
npm run dev:backend    # Express with tsx watch on port 5000

4. Build for Production

npm run build

Compiles the backend TypeScript (tsc) and builds the frontend bundle (vite build) into backend/dist/ and frontend/dist/ respectively.

Project Structure

2nd-home/
├── backend/
│   └── src/
│       ├── config/          # DB, Cloudinary, Stripe, mailer, env
│       ├── controllers/     # Route handlers (12 controllers)
│       ├── middleware/      # Auth, error, rate-limit, sanitize
│       ├── models/          # Mongoose schemas (10 models)
│       ├── routes/          # Express routers (12 route files)
│       ├── types/           # TypeScript declarations
│       ├── validation/      # Zod schemas
│       └── index.ts         # Express app entry point
├── frontend/
│   └── src/
│       ├── components/      # Reusable UI components
│       ├── layout/          # App layout wrapper
│       ├── lib/             # Utilities (image, helpers)
│       └── pages/           # Page components (16 routes)
├── package.json             # Workspace root
└── README.md

Scripts

Command	Description
npm run dev	Start both frontend and backend dev
npm run dev:frontend	Start Vite dev server on port 3000
npm run dev:backend	Start Express with hot reload
npm run build	Build both packages for production
npm run lint	TypeScript type-checking (frontend)

Roles

The application uses four user roles, each with a dedicated dashboard:

Role	Dashboard	Capabilities
Student	/student-dashboard	Browse, book, chat, save listings, review
Owner	/owner-dashboard	Manage listings, bookings, verification
Verifier	/verifier-dashboard	Accept assignments, submit inspection reports
Admin	/admin-dashboard	Manage users, assign verifiers, view reports