ForeCafe

ForeCafe is a full-stack social web application for sharing favorite café drinks, saving café locations, and connecting with friends. The project uses an MVC-style Node.js backend with MongoDB for persistence, Redis-backed sessions for authentication state, Handlebars for page templates, and React bundles for interactive client-side views.

Accessible at -> https://forecafe-777e7f57c981.herokuapp.com/home

Table of Contents

• Overview
• Key Features
• Tech Stack
• Project Structure
• Getting Started
• Environment Variables
• Available Scripts
• Application Routes
• Data Model Summary
• Security and Middleware
• Development Notes

Overview

ForeCafe is designed as a small social platform centered around café culture. After creating an account, users can:

• create and manage drinks,
• save café locations with coordinates,
• mark drinks as favorites,
• search for other users,
• send, accept, and reject friend requests,
• browse a shared home feed containing drinks and locations from across the platform,
• view a personal profile page with friends, favorite drinks, and saved locations.

The app serves Handlebars views from the Express server and mounts page-specific React applications into those views for dynamic behavior.

Key Features

Authentication and Sessions

• Sign up with a username and password.
• Log in and log out with server-managed sessions.
• Change account passwords.
• Secure session storage using Redis.

Drink Management

• Create drinks with a name, temperature, and ingredients.
• Mark drinks as favorites at creation time or later.
• Remove previously created drinks.
• View personal drinks and shared drink content on the home page.

Location Management

• Save café locations with a name, address, longitude, and latitude.
• Remove saved locations.
• View personal locations and platform-wide location content on the home page.

Social Features

• Search for users by username.
• Send friend requests.
• Accept or reject incoming friend requests.
• View current friends on the friends page.
• View friends and favorite drinks on the profile page.

Built-In Documentation

• The application includes an authenticated /documentation page that lists supported routes and expected request formats.

Tech Stack

Backend

• Node.js
• Express
• Mongoose
• MongoDB
• Redis
• express-session
• connect-redis
• Handlebars

Frontend

• React
• React DOM
• Webpack
• Babel
• CSS

Supporting Libraries

• bcrypt for password hashing
• helmet for secure HTTP headers
• compression for response compression
• body-parser for JSON and form handling

Project Structure

.
├── client/                 # React entry points for each page
├── hosted/                 # Compiled frontend bundles, styles, and static assets
├── server/
│   ├── controllers/        # Route handlers and application logic
│   ├── middleware/         # Authentication and request middleware
│   ├── models/             # Mongoose schemas and model exports
│   ├── app.js              # Express app bootstrap
│   └── router.js           # Route definitions
├── views/                  # Handlebars page templates
├── webpack.config.js       # Frontend bundle configuration
└── package.json            # Dependencies and npm scripts

Getting Started

Prerequisites

Make sure the following services and tools are available locally:

• Node.js 18 or higher
• npm
• MongoDB
• Redis

Installation

1. Clone the repository.

2. Install dependencies:

   npm ci

3. Create a .env file in the project root.

4. Add the required environment variables listed below.

5. Start MongoDB and Redis.

6. Build the frontend bundles:

   npm run webpack

7. Start the server:

   npm start

8. Open http://localhost:3000 in your browser unless you configured a different port.

Environment Variables

The server reads configuration from environment variables with dotenv.

Variable	Required	Purpose
PORT	No	Primary port used by the Express server.
NODE_PORT	No	Fallback port if PORT is not set.
MONGODB_URI	No	MongoDB connection string. Defaults to mongodb://127.0.0.1/ForeCafe.
REDISCLOUD_URL	Yes	Redis connection URL used for session storage. Despite the name, it can point to a local Redis instance or a hosted Redis service.

Example:

PORT=3000
MONGODB_URI=mongodb://127.0.0.1/ForeCafe
REDISCLOUD_URL=redis://127.0.0.1:6379

Available Scripts

Script	Description
npm start	Starts the Express server.
npm run nodemon	Starts the server with file watching for server, HTML, and CSS changes.
npm run webpack	Builds the React frontend bundles into hosted/.
npm run webpackWatch	Rebuilds frontend assets in watch mode.
npm test	Runs ESLint on the server/ directory and then executes the placeholder test command.

Application Routes

Page Routes

Route	Method	Description	Access
/	GET	Login page	Logged-out users
/login	GET	Login page	Logged-out users
/home	GET	Shared home feed for drinks and locations	Logged-in users
/documentation	GET	In-app API documentation page	Logged-in users
/drink	GET	Drink management page	Logged-in users
/location	GET	Location management page	Logged-in users
/profile	GET	Logged-in user profile	Logged-in users
/friend	GET	Friend search and requests page	Logged-in users
/logout	GET	Destroys session and redirects to login	Logged-in users

Account and Social API

Route	Method	Description
/login	POST	Authenticates a user and starts a session
/signup	POST	Creates a new account
/changePassword	POST	Changes a user password
/getUserProfile	GET	Returns profile data, favorite drinks, friends, and locations
/getFriends	GET	Returns the authenticated user's friends
/searchUsers	GET	Searches users by username with a query parameter
/sendFriendRequest	POST	Sends a friend request to another user
/acceptFriendRequest	POST	Accepts a pending friend request
/rejectFriendRequest	POST	Rejects a pending friend request
/getFriendRequests	GET	Returns pending friend requests
/getHomeData	GET	Returns drinks and locations shown on the home feed

Drink API

Route	Method	Description
/drink	POST	Creates a new drink
/getDrinks	GET	Returns drinks owned by the authenticated user
/removeDrink	POST	Deletes a drink by ID or name
/favoriteDrink	POST	Toggles a drink's favorite status

Location API

Route	Method	Description
/makeLocation	POST	Creates a new location
/getLocations	GET	Returns locations owned by the authenticated user
/removeLocation	POST	Deletes a location by ID or name

Data Model Summary

Account

• username
• password
• profilePicture
• friends
• friendRequests
• favoriteDrinks
• locations
• createdDate

Drink

• name
• temperature (Hot or Cold)
• ingredients
• favorite
• owner
• createdDate

Location

• name
• address
• loc.type
• loc.coordinates
• owner
• createdDate

Security and Middleware

• Passwords are hashed with bcrypt.
• Session state is stored in Redis using express-session and connect-redis.
• helmet is enabled for secure HTTP headers.
• Auth-protected routes use middleware that requires an active session.
• Logged-in users are redirected away from logged-out-only routes.
• Drink and location names are sanitized at the schema level with underscore.escape.

Development Notes

• Frontend code lives in client/ and is bundled per page with Webpack.
• Compiled assets are emitted into hosted/.
• The server automatically creates an uploads directory at startup if it does not exist.
• The current npm test script primarily performs linting and then prints a placeholder completion message, so additional automated test coverage may still be needed for production readiness.