🎓 Student Platform API

A RESTful backend for a student platform that lets teachers create and manage courses, assignments, announcements and materials, while students enroll in courses, view resources and submit assignments online.

Note: This repository currently contains only the backend. A frontend can be added later and consume the API documented here.

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✨ Features

• 🔐 Authentication & Authorization — JWT-based register/login with role-based access control (Student, Teacher, Admin, Parent).
• 📚 Course Management — teachers and admins can create, update and delete courses.
• 📝 Assignments & Submissions — teachers publish assignments with due dates; enrolled students submit (and re-submit) work; teachers grade and give feedback.
• 📢 Announcements — course announcements posted by teachers.
• 📄 Materials — teachers share files/links for each course.
• 🧑‍🎓 Enrollment — students enroll themselves or are enrolled by teachers/admins; enrollment is enforced when accessing course resources.
• 🗂️ Clean Architecture — separated layers: models → repository → services → controllers → routers.
• 📊 Swagger UI — auto-generated interactive API documentation.

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🛠️ Tech Stack

Layer	Technology
Runtime	Node.js (Express 5)
Framework	Express
Database	MongoDB + Mongoose
Auth	jsonwebtoken + bcryptjs
API Docs	swagger-ui-express
Dev	nodemon

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🚀 Getting Started

Prerequisites

• Node.js 18+
• MongoDB (local instance or MongoDB Atlas)
• npm

Installation

# 1. Clone the repository
git clone https://github.com/Shamble96/Student_Platform.git
cd Student_Platform/Backend

# 2. Install dependencies
npm install

# 3. Configure environment variables
cp .env.example .env

# 4. Edit .env and set your values (see Configuration table below)

# 5. Start the server
npm run dev        # development (auto-reload)
# or
npm start          # production

The server will start on http://localhost:3333 (or the port you set in .env).

Configuration

Copy .env.example to .env and set the following variables:

Variable	Description	Default
PORT	Port the server runs on	3333
MONGO_URI	MongoDB connection string	mongodb://127.0.0.1:27017/student_platform
JWT_SECRET	Secret key used to sign JWT tokens	(required)
JWT_EXPIRE	Token lifetime (e.g. 30d, 7d, 2h)	30d

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📖 API Documentation

Once the server is running, open the interactive Swagger UI:

http://localhost:3333/api-docs

Role-based access summary

Role	Can do
Student	Enroll in courses, view enrolled course resources, submit assignments
Teacher	Create/manage their own courses, assignments, announcements, materials, grade submissions
Admin	Everything a teacher can do, plus full access to all courses
Parent	Reserved for future use

Endpoints overview

Auth — /api/auth

Method	Endpoint	Access
POST	/api/auth/register	Public
POST	/api/auth/login	Public
GET	/api/auth/me	Private

Courses — /api/courses

Method	Endpoint	Access
GET	/api/courses	Private
POST	/api/courses	Teacher, Admin
GET	/api/courses/:id	Private
PUT	/api/courses/:id	Teacher, Admin
DELETE	/api/courses/:id	Teacher, Admin

Enrollments — /api/courses/:courseId/enrollments

Method	Endpoint	Access
GET	/api/courses/:courseId/enrollments	Private
POST	/api/courses/:courseId/enrollments	Student, Teacher, Admin
DELETE	/api/courses/:courseId/enrollments/:studentId	Teacher, Admin

Assignments — /api/courses/:courseId/assignments & /api/assignments

Method	Endpoint	Access
GET	/api/assignments	Private
GET	/api/assignments/:id	Private
PUT	/api/assignments/:id	Teacher, Admin
DELETE	/api/assignments/:id	Teacher, Admin
GET	/api/courses/:courseId/assignments	Private
POST	/api/courses/:courseId/assignments	Teacher, Admin

Submissions — /api/assignments/:assignmentId/submissions

Method	Endpoint	Access
POST	/api/assignments/:assignmentId/submissions	Student
GET	/api/assignments/:assignmentId/submissions	Teacher, Admin
GET	/api/assignments/:assignmentId/submissions/my-submission	Student
PUT	/api/assignments/:assignmentId/submissions/:submissionId/grade	Teacher, Admin

Announcements — /api/courses/:courseId/announcements

Method	Endpoint	Access
GET	/api/courses/:courseId/announcements	Private
POST	/api/courses/:courseId/announcements	Teacher, Admin
DELETE	/api/courses/:courseId/announcements/:id	Teacher, Admin

Materials — /api/courses/:courseId/materials

Method	Endpoint	Access
GET	/api/courses/:courseId/materials	Private
POST	/api/courses/:courseId/materials	Teacher, Admin
DELETE	/api/courses/:courseId/materials/:id	Teacher, Admin

Students — /api/students

Method	Endpoint	Access
GET	/api/students/my-courses	Student
GET	/api/students/courses/:courseId	Student
POST	/api/students/assignments/:assignmentId/submit	Student
GET	/api/students/assignments/:assignmentId/submission	Student

All endpoints except register and login require a Bearer token:

Authorization: Bearer <your_jwt_token>

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📁 Project Structure

Student_Platform/
└── Backend/
    ├── config/            # Database connection
    ├── controllers/       # Request handlers (thin layer over services)
    ├── middlewares/       # Auth (JWT), role authorization, student enrollment guards
    ├── models/            # Mongoose schemas (User, Course, Assignment, ...)
    ├── repository/        # Data-access layer
    ├── routers/           # Express route definitions
    ├── services/          # Business logic
    ├── swagger/           # OpenAPI specification (swagger.yaml)
    ├── app.js             # Express app setup + middleware + route mounting
    ├── server.js          # Server entry point
    └── .env.example       # Environment variable template

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📜 Available Scripts

Script	Description
npm start	Run the server in production mode
npm run dev	Run the server with nodemon (auto-reload)

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🧪 Example Request

# Register a user
curl -X POST http://localhost:3333/api/auth/register \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"username": "john", "email": "john@example.com", "password": "password123", "role": "Student"}'

# Login
curl -X POST http://localhost:3333/api/auth/login \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"email": "john@example.com", "password": "password123"}'

# Get authenticated user
curl http://localhost:3333/api/auth/me \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer <your_jwt_token>"

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🤝 Contributing

Contributions are welcome! To contribute:

1. Fork the repository.
2. Create a feature branch: git checkout -b feature/my-feature.
3. Commit your changes: git commit -m "Add my feature".
4. Push to the branch: git push origin feature/my-feature.
5. Open a pull request.

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📄 License

This project is licensed under the ISC License.

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👤 Author

Shambel Dechu

• GitHub: @Shambel96