Litstack

A personal book tracking app. Search the Open Library catalogue, add books to your shelf, track reading progress, and leave reviews — all in one place.

Built with Laravel 13, Livewire 4, Flux UI, and Tailwind CSS 4.

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Features

• Shelf — view your entire collection with filter by ownership (owned / wishlist), reading status (in progress / completed / abandoned), author, and genre
• Book search — find any book by title, author, or ISBN via the Open Library API; covers are fetched and cached locally
• Reading tracking — log start/end dates and track progress through each book
• Reviews — write a review and star rating (1–5) once you've finished a book
• Detail panel — slide-in panel on the shelf showing full book metadata, status controls, and review
• Authentication — registration, login, email verification, password reset, and two-factor authentication (TOTP)

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Tech stack

Layer	Package	Version
Framework	Laravel	13
Reactive UI	Livewire	4
UI components	Flux UI	2
CSS	Tailwind CSS	4
Auth backend	Laravel Fortify	1
Testing	Pest	4
Runtime	PHP	8.3

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Local setup

1. Install dependencies and initialise the environment

composer run setup

This installs Composer and npm packages, copies .env.example → .env, generates an app key, and runs migrations.

2. Start the development server

composer run dev

Runs the Laravel server, queue listener, log viewer (Pail), and Vite dev server concurrently.

The app is available at http://localhost:8000.

3. (Optional) Seed demo data

php artisan db:seed

Creates a demo user (demo@litstack.app / Passw0rd) with a pre-populated shelf of classic books.

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Testing

php artisan test --compact

Tests use an in-memory SQLite database and run in isolation via RefreshDatabase. Feature tests cover auth flows, profile/security settings, and book shelf behaviour (cleanup, cover caching).

To also check code style before running tests:

composer run test

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Demo account

The app supports a publicly accessible demo account that visitors can log into without a password. This is intended for portfolio or staging deployments.

Enable it by setting these values in .env:

DEMO_ENABLED=true
DEMO_EMAIL=demo@litstack.app

When enabled, a "Continue as demo user" button appears on the login page. Visiting /demo-login logs the visitor in immediately (rate-limited to 10 requests/minute). Password changes and 2FA settings are disabled for the demo account.

Seed the demo shelf on a fresh deployment:

php artisan migrate --force
php artisan db:seed --force

ShelfSeeder uses firstOrCreate so re-running it is safe.

Reset the demo data at any time (clears all non-demo users and re-seeds the demo shelf, including deleting cached cover files):

php artisan demo:reset

This is also scheduled to run automatically every day at 04:00. To activate the scheduler on your server, add one cron entry:

* * * * * cd /var/www/litstack && php artisan schedule:run >> /dev/null 2>&1

On Laravel Cloud / Forge / Vapor, use the built-in Scheduler panel instead.

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Environment

Key .env values to review before deploying:

APP_ENV=production
APP_URL=https://your-domain.com

DB_CONNECTION=mysql   # sqlite by default; switch for production

MAIL_MAILER=smtp      # log by default

DEMO_ENABLED=false
DEMO_EMAIL=demo@litstack.app

Cover images are cached to storage/app/public/covers/ — run php artisan storage:link once after initial setup if the symlink is not already present.