Civic-Assist 🏙️

Civic-Assist is a simple full-stack web app to report and track civic issues (potholes, streetlight faults, garbage, water leaks) with images and location support.

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🚀 Overview

Civic-Assist lets citizens report local infrastructure issues with a title, description, category, photo and location. Admin users can review and change issue status. The app demonstrates a typical MERN-style architecture with user authentication, file uploads, and a map-based issue detail view.

✨ Features

• User registration & login (JWT)
• Password reset (email)
• Create and view issues with optional image upload
• Address autocomplete + map/location support (OpenStreetMap)
• Upvote issues
• Admin dashboard for managing issues (change status / remove)
• Small scripts to create or promote a local Admin account

🧰 Tech Stack

• Frontend: React (Vite)
• Backend: Node.js, Express
• Database: MongoDB (Atlas)
• Auth: JSON Web Tokens (JWT)
• Image uploads: Cloudinary (via multer)
• Maps / Geocoding: OpenStreetMap (Nominatim) / Leaflet

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📦 Installation

Follow these steps to run the project locally.

1. Clone the repository

git clone <your-repo-url>
cd CivicAssist

2. Backend setup

cd server
cp .env.example .env   # create a .env from example (if available)
# Edit .env and set values for MONGO_URI or DATABASE_URL, JWT_SECRET, CLOUDINARY_*, ADMIN_SECRET_KEY, etc.
npm install
# Start server (development)
npm run dev

3. Frontend setup

cd client
npm install
npm run dev

Open the frontend URL printed by Vite (usually http://localhost:5173) and the API at http://localhost:5000.

Notes about environment variables

• DATABASE_URL — MongoDB Atlas connection string (preferred for cloud)
• JWT_SECRET — a secret for signing JWTs
• CLOUDINARY_* — Cloudinary credentials (if using image uploads) when registering via API

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⚡ Quick Usage

• Register a new user via the frontend or POST /api/auth/register
• Login via the frontend or POST /api/auth/login to receive a JWT
• Create an issue via the frontend (Report Issue) or POST /api/issues with the JWT in Authorization header

Example: create an issue (curl)

curl -X POST http://localhost:5000/api/issues \
	-H "Authorization: Bearer <YOUR_TOKEN>" \
	-H "Content-Type: application/json" \
	-d '{"title":"Pothole on Main St","description":"Large pothole near crosswalk","category":"Pothole","address":"Main St, YourCity"}'

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🔌 API Endpoints

Major endpoints (backend lives in /server):

• Auth

  • POST /api/auth/register — register (body: username, email, password, optional role/adminKey)
  • POST /api/auth/login — login (body: email, password)
  • GET /api/auth/user — get current user (protected)
  • POST /api/auth/forgot — request password reset
  • POST /api/auth/reset/:token — reset password

• Issues

  • GET /api/issues — list issues (query filters supported)
  • POST /api/issues — create issue (protected, fields: title, description, category, address, optional coordinates, imageUrl)
  • GET /api/issues/:issueId — get issue details
  • POST /api/issues/:issueId/upvote — toggle upvote (protected)
  • PATCH /api/issues/:issueId/status — admin only: change status
  • DELETE /api/issues/:issueId — admin only: delete issue

• Uploads

  • POST /api/upload — multipart image upload (returns imageUrl)

• Comments

  • POST /api/issues/:issueId/comments — add comment (protected)
  • GET /api/issues/:issueId/comments — list comments

Authentication: include Authorization: Bearer <JWT> header for protected routes.

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🧩 Useful scripts

• npm run dev (in /server) — start backend with nodemon
• npm run start (in /server) — start backend once
• npm run create-admin (in /server) — run scripts/createAdmin.js to create/promote a local admin (uses ADMIN_EMAIL/ADMIN_PASSWORD env vars if provided)
• npm run dev (in /client) — start frontend (Vite)

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🛡️ Security notes

• Avoid putting secrets into public repos. Use environment variables and a secrets manager in production.

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📄 License

This project is provided under the MIT License — see the LICENSE file for details.

👤 Author

Jashanpreet kaur

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Happy hacking! 🔧🎉

Civic-Assist

This repository is a starter scaffold for Civic-Assist — a map-based civic issue reporting app.

What I created so far:

• Server: Express + Mongoose API with models for User, Issue, Comment.
• Auth routes: register and login with JWT.
• Issue routes: create, list, get, update status (admin), upvote toggle, delete (admin or owner).
• Comment routes: add and list comments for an issue.
• Minimal React (Vite) client skeleton that calls the backend root endpoint.