🌐 Community Platform.

Comprehensive social platform based on Express.js and React. Supports advanced user, group, post and notification features.

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📦 Project features.

🔒 Backend:

• Sessions and authentication: JWT and cookie-parser support.
• Database: MongoDB with Mongoose.
• REST API: Over 27 routes with POST, GET, DELETE methods and more.
• Security: Middleware to prevent unauthorised access.
• Passwords: Stored in encrypted form for greater security.

🎨 Frontend:

• Routing and navigation: Dynamic redirection and access protection.
• React-Query: Efficient application state management and data caching.
• User interface: Convenient user experience, responsiveness and loading system.

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⚙️ Installation.

To start using the project, follow these steps:

1. Install backend dependencies.

   npm and

2. Install frontend dependencies.

   cd frontend
   npm i

3. build the whole project

 npm run build

🚀 Starting the project:

1. Starting the backend.

   npm run dev

2. Starting the frontend.

   cd frontend
   npm run dev

🛠️ User features:

🧑‍💻 User Profile:.

• Display profile picture, background, bio, links and other information.
• Editing user data, including changing profile pictures.
• Information on number of posts, subscriptions and likes.

📝 ** Posts:**.

• Creation: Posts can contain text, images or both.
• Interactions: Ability to like, comment and share.
• Management: Deletion of posts by authors.

🏘️ Groups (Communities):.

• Overview: View available groups and their administrators.
• Creation: Ability to create and manage your own group.
• Administrators: Add and delete group administrators.

🔔 Notifications:.

1. Types of notifications:

• Likes of posts.
• New subscribers.
• Shares of posts.
• New posts by a user.

2. Markings: Notifications as ‘unread’ or ‘read’.

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💻 Technologies used in the project.

🌐 Backend.

• Express.js.
  Node.js framework for fast and flexible web application development. Used in the project for routing, middleware and building a RESTful API.

• Routing.
  Routing was implemented using the built-in Express.js router. With middleware it is possible to effectively manage routes and secure endpoints from unauthorised access.

• Cookie-parser.
  Used to handle cookies to store user session data.

• JWT Tokens (JSON Web Tokens).
  Used for secure user authentication. Tokens are stored in cookies and allow the session to remain active for a specified period of time.

• bcrypt.
  Used to encrypt user passwords before storing them in the database. Provides an additional layer of security by implementing password hashing functionality.

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🎨 Frontend.

• React
  Framework for building a user interface. Applied in the project with the Vite tool, enabling faster and more efficient project management.

• TanStack React Query.
  Used to manage data coming from the API. With React Query, data is cached and refreshed in real-time, improving application performance and user experience.

• Tailwind CSS.
  Utility-first CSS framework used for frontend application styling. Allows you to quickly create responsive and modern user interfaces with ready-made classes.

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⚙️ API architecture.

The project uses a RESTful API architecture with the following assumptions:

• Each endpoint is well documented and has a clearly defined function.
• Supported methods:
  • GET: Retrieving data from the database.
  • POST: Creating new resources (e.g. users, posts).
  • DELETE: Deleting resources (e.g. posts, groups).
  • PATCH/PUT: Update existing data.
• Middleware ensures that only logged-in users can use endpoints requiring authorisation.

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🔒 Security.

• JWT and cookie-parser are used in combination to ensure secure session management.
• Passwords are encrypted using bcrypt, preventing them from being read in the event of a data leak.
• Middleware protects sensitive data by restricting access to users with appropriate permissions.

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🗂️ Database structure.

1. Users

• _id (primary key)
• username
• fullname
• password
• email
• followers (foreign key)
• following (foreign key)
• profileImg
• coverImg
• bio
• link
• likedPosts(foreign key)

2. Posts

• _id (primary key)
• likes (foreign key)
• comments (foreign ket)
• text
• user (foreign key)
• img

3. Notifications.

• _id (primary key)
• read
• from (foreign key)
• to (foreign key)
• type
• target (foreign key)

4. Communities

• _id (primary key)
• location
• headqurters
• companySize
• type
• industry
• followers (foreign key)
• admins (foreign key)
• coverImg
• profileImg

❗ Error handling.

• All errors are handled on both the frontend and backend side.

• A button locking mechanism prevents multiple requests.