Vouched

An invite-only, high-trust rental community platform connecting property hosts with vetted renters. Access is gated by an invite-code system: existing users generate invite codes, and new users must present a valid code to register.

Tech Stack

• Backend: Python 3.12 / FastAPI / SQLAlchemy / PostgreSQL
• Frontend: React 18 (Create React App)
• Auth: JWT (HS256) via python-jose, passwords hashed with passlib/bcrypt

Getting Started (Docker)

docker compose up

This starts three services:

Service	Port
PostgreSQL	5434
Backend	8001
Frontend	3000

Running the Backend Manually

Prerequisites

• Python 3.12+
• A running PostgreSQL instance (you can start just the database from Docker with docker compose up db)

Install dependencies

cd backend
python3 -m venv venv
source venv/bin/activate
pip install -r requirements.txt

Configure environment

Set the required environment variables, or create a backend/.env file (python-dotenv loads it automatically):

export DATABASE_URL="postgresql://vouched_user:vouched_pass@localhost:5434/vouched_db"
export SECRET_KEY="some-dev-secret"
export UPLOAD_DIR="./uploads"

Note: When connecting to the Dockerised PostgreSQL from the host, use localhost:5434. Inside Docker the backend connects to db:5432 instead.

Start the dev server

uvicorn app.main:app --host 0.0.0.0 --port 8001 --reload

On first run the backend auto-creates all database tables via Base.metadata.create_all().

Verify it's running

curl http://localhost:8001/api/health
# {"status":"ok"}

The interactive API docs are available at http://localhost:8001/docs.

Environment Variables

Variable	Default	Description
DATABASE_URL	postgresql://vouched_user:vouched_pass@db:5432/vouched_db	PostgreSQL connection string (host port: 5434)
SECRET_KEY	change-me-in-production	JWT signing key
UPLOAD_DIR	/app/uploads	Directory for uploaded property photos
ALLOWED_ORIGINS	http://localhost:3000	Comma-separated list of allowed CORS origins

API Routes

All routes are prefixed with /api.

Prefix	Description
/api/auth	Login (OAuth2 password flow), JWT tokens
/api/users	User profile management
/api	Invite code generation, validation, signup
/api/properties	Property CRUD, photo uploads, whitelist mgmt
/api	Meeting requests (create, list, accept)
/api/bookings	Booking requests
/api/network	List vouched users in the network
/api/health	Health check

Uploaded photos are served at /static/uploads/<filename>.