RandomJournal

The application allows users to register, login and make their own journal entries which will be shared anonymously with other users. Users who make an entry between 12pm the previous day and 24hrs from that time receive an email (emails are sent daily at 12pm) with journal entries from other users who shared an entry within the same timeframe. These users may also see the journal entries on the web app only if they meet the same criteria that applies for receiving the email.

The application is made using Laravel, Vue.js and Inertia (PHP and JavaScript). With Tailwind providing a lot of the CSS classes.

Prerequisites

• Composer
• Node.js - v16.0.0 + (make sure to add the path to the nodejs application in your system environment variables so as to run the node command from anywhere when using the terminal)

Project setup/Installation locally

• First, clone the project using git clone https://github.com/brayo333/random-journal.git on a terminal
• Next, change directory into the cloned project and run composer install in a terminal
• Create a .env file from .env.example by running cp .env.example .env
• Make the necessary configuration changes in the .env file
• Run php artisan key:generate to generate a key for your application (for encryption)
• Run php artisan migrate to create the database
• Run npm install to install Node dependancies (for Vue)

You will need two terminals running for the next two:

• Run php artisan serve to run the server locally
• Run npm run dev to run the Vue pages (UI/frontend) locally
• View app locally on a browser on the link http://127.0.0.1:8000/ or http://localhost:8000/

You can use another terminal:

• Run php artisan schedule:work to run the scheduler on the foreground ('manually') to test email sending functionality

Project setup (production) pointers

• Remember to change the app environment to 'production' and make necessary changes in the .env

• Run npm run build to generate a production build for the frontend

• You can use php artisan optimize to cache server configurations and routes

• You can use php artisan optimize:clear to clear the cache

• Run php artisan schedule:run to run the scheduler on the background for (sending emails). You will need to create a cron on your server for the application. Read this article.

License

This package is an open-sourced software licensed under the MIT license.