live-polling-chat-app

Overview

This project is a web application built with a React.js frontend (using Vite) and a Node.js backend. The application is designed to perform real-time polling that integrates a voting system and a chat feature.

Table of Contents

• [Getting Started](#getting-started)
  • [Prerequisites](#prerequisites)
  • [Installation](#installation)
  • [Running the Application](#running-the-application)
  • [Environment Variables](#environment-variables)
  • [Accessing the Deployed Version](#accessing-the-deployed-version)
• [Contributing](#contributing)
• [License](#license)

Getting Started

Prerequisites

Make sure you have the following software installed on your machine:

• Node.js (v20 or higher)
• npm
• MongoDB (local installation or use MongoDB Atlas for cloud-hosted database)

Installation

1. Clone the repository

   git clone https://github.com/aswanth-aswanth/Snap-stack.git cd SnapStack

2. Install dependencies

   Frontend

   cd frontend npm install

   # Backend cd ../backend npm install

Running the Application

Backend

Set up environment variables

Create a `.env` file in the `backend` directory with the following content:

JWT_SECRET=secret
FRONTEND_URL=http://localhost:5173
PORT=5000
MONGO_URI=mongodb://localhost:27017/your-database-name
EMAIL_USERNAME=""
EMAIL_PASSWORD=""

Start the backend server

npm run dev

The backend server should now be running at `http://localhost:5000\`.

Frontend

Set up environment variables

Create a `.env` file in the `frontend` directory with the following content:

VITE_API_BASE_URL=http://localhost:5000

Start the frontend development server

npm run dev

The frontend should now be running at `http://localhost:5173\`.

Environment Variables

Backend

• JWT_SECRET: Secret key for JWT authentication.
• FRONTEND_URL: URL of the frontend application.
• PORT: Port number where the backend server will run.
• DB_URL: MongoDB connection string. Example for local MongoDB: `mongodb://localhost:27017/your-database-name`.

Frontend

• VITE_API_BASE_URL: Base URL for the API calls made from the frontend.

Accessing the Deployed Version

If you have deployed this application, you can access it at `your-deployment-url`. Ensure that the environment variables for both frontend and backend are correctly configured for production. For instance:

Backend `.env`:

JWT_SECRET=your-production-secret
FRONTEND_URL=https://your-frontend-url.com
PORT=4000
DB_URL=mongodb+srv://\<username\>:\<password\>@cluster0.mongodb.net/your-database-name?retryWrites=true&w=majority

Frontend `.env`:

VITE_API_BASE_URL=https://your-backend-url.com

Contributing

Contributions are welcome! Please fork the repository and create a pull request with your changes.

License

This project is licensed under the MIT License. See the [LICENSE](LICENSE) file for more details.