42 Project Matcha

Matcha is a social matchmaking application developed as part of the 42 curriculum. The platform provides advanced user interactions, real-time chat, notifications, and matchmaking features using a modern tech stack.

• Features
• Tech Stack
• Architecture
• Quick Start
• Setup
• Services & Endpoints
• .env Template
• Testing with Dummy Data

✨ Features

🔐 Authentication & Security

• JWT-based authentication
• Secure session management
• Email verification system
• Password strength validation

👤 User Profiles

• Upload 1–5 profile pictures
• Interactive location picker with map
• Real-time age calculation
• Bio and interests management

💫 Smart Interactions

• Like/Pass system with instant feedback
• Intelligent matchmaking algorithm
• Browse history tracking
• Block & report functionality

🔍 Advanced Search

• Filter by age, location, interests
• Sort by distance or compatibility
• Real-time search results
• Pagination support

🔔 Real-time Notifications

• Match notifications
• Profile view alerts
• Like/Unlike updates
• Message notifications
• WebSocket-based instant delivery

💬 Live Chat

• Real-time messaging
• Chat only with matched users
• Message history
• Online/Offline status
• Typing indicators

👮 Admin Panel

• User report management
• Ban/Unban functionality
• View reported users with reasons

🛠 Tech Stack

Backend

Framework    : Spring Boot 3.5.4
Language     : Java 17
Security     : Spring Security + JWT
Real-time    : WebSocket (STOMP)
API          : GraphQL + REST
Build        : Gradle

Key Dependencies:

• spring-boot-starter-graphql - GraphQL API
• spring-boot-starter-websocket - Real-time communication
• spring-boot-starter-security - Authentication & Authorization
• jjwt - JWT token management
• spring-boot-starter-mail - Email notifications

Frontend

Framework    : Angular 20.2
Language     : TypeScript 5.0
UI Library   : Standalone Components
State        : Signals API
Routing      : Angular Router
Forms        : Reactive Forms

Key Features:

• zxcvbn - Password strength validation
• leaflet - Interactive maps
• WebSocket client for real-time updates
• GraphQL client integration

Databases

Graph DB     : Neo4j 5.0
  ├─ User profiles & relationships
  ├─ Matchmaking graph algorithms
  └─ Like/Block/Match connections

Document DB  : MongoDB
  ├─ Chat messages
  ├─ Notifications
  └─ User activity logs

Infrastructure

Reverse Proxy : Nginx
Containerization : Docker & Docker Compose
Orchestration : Docker Compose with health checks

📁 Project Structure

matcha/
├── backend/        # Spring Boot backend with GraphQL API
├── angular/        # Angular frontend
├── nginx/          # Nginx configuration
├── neo4j/          # Neo4j initialization scripts and dummy user generator
├── docker-compose.yml
├── .env            # Local environment variables (not in repo)
└── README.md

🏗 Architecture

graph TB
    subgraph "Client Layer"
        A[Angular Frontend<br/>Port 4200]
    end
    
    subgraph "Gateway Layer"
        B[Nginx<br/>Port 80]
    end
    
    subgraph "Application Layer"
        C[Spring Boot API<br/>Port 8080]
        D[GraphQL Endpoint]
        E[REST API]
        F[WebSocket Server]
    end
    
    subgraph "Data Layer"
        G[(Neo4j<br/>Port 7687)]
        H[(MongoDB<br/>Port 27017)]
    end
    
    A -->|HTTP/WS| B
    B -->|Proxy| C
    C --> D
    C --> E
    C --> F
    D -->|Users & Relationships| G
    E -->|Users & Relationships| G
    F -->|Chat & Notifications| H
    
    style A fill:#DD0031,color:#fff
    style B fill:#009639,color:#fff
    style C fill:#6DB33F,color:#fff
    style G fill:#008CC1,color:#fff
    style H fill:#47A248,color:#fff

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🚀 Quick Start

Prerequisites

• Docker & Docker Compose
• Git

One-Command Setup

git clone <repository-url>
cd matcha
cp .env.example .env  # Edit with your credentials
docker-compose up --build

🎉 That's it! Access the app at http://localhost

📋 Setup

Step 1: Clone Repository

git clone <repository-url>
cd matcha

Step 2: Environment Configuration

Create .env file in the root directory:

cp .env.example .env

Edit .env with your credentials (see .env Template below)

Step 3: Start Services

docker-compose up --build

Step 4: Initialize Test Data (Optional)

# Generate 500 dummy users for testing
cd neo4j
python test.py

docker exec -it matcha-neo4j bash
cypher-shell -u {neo4j_username} -p {neo4j_password} -f /docker-entrypoint-initdb.d/init_profiles.cypher

🌐 Services & Endpoints

Service	URL	Description
🎨 Frontend	http://localhost	Angular application
🔌 Backend API	http://localhost:8080/api	Spring Boot REST API
📊 GraphQL	http://localhost:8080/api/graphql	GraphQL playground
🔵 Neo4j Browser	http://localhost:7474	Graph database UI
🟢 MongoDB	mongodb://localhost:27017	Document database
🗂️ Mongo Express	http://localhost:8081	MongoDB admin UI

🔐 .env Template

Create a .env file with the following configuration:

#━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
# 🖥️  Server Configuration
#━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
SERVER_PORT=8080
APP_URL=http://localhost
FRONTEND_URL=http://localhost

#━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
# 🔑 JWT Configuration
#━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
JWT_TYPE=Bearer
JWT_SECRET=your_super_secret_jwt_key_min_256_bits_recommended
JWT_EXPIRATIONMS_ACCESSTOKEN=3600000      # 1 hour
JWT_EXPIRATIONMS_REFRESHTOKEN=86400000    # 24 hours

#━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
# 🍃 MongoDB Configuration
#━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
SPRING_DATA_MONGODB_URI=mongodb://admin:password@mongodb:27017/matcha
SPRING_DATA_MONGODB_USERNAME=admin
SPRING_DATA_MONGODB_PASSWORD=password
ME_CONFIG_MONGODB_SERVER=mongodb

#━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
# 🔵 Neo4j Configuration
#━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
SPRING_NEO4J_URI=bolt://neo4j:7687
SPRING_NEO4J_AUTHENTICATION_USERNAME=neo4j
SPRING_NEO4J_AUTHENTICATION_PASSWORD=your_neo4j_password

#━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
# 📧 Mail Server Configuration (Gmail Example)
#━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
SMTP_MAIL_HOST=smtp.gmail.com
SPRING_MAIL_PORT=587
SPRING_MAIL_USERNAME=your_email@gmail.com
SPRING_MAIL_PASSWORD=your_app_password
SPRING_MAIL_PROTOCOL=smtp
SPRING_MAIL_PROPERTIES_MAIL_SMTP_AUTH=true
SPRING_MAIL_PROPERTIES_MAIL_SMTP_STARTTLS_ENABLE=true
SPRING_MAIL_PROPERTIES_MAIL_SMTP_STARTTLS_REQUIRED=true

#━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
# 📁 File Upload & GraphQL
#━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
FILE_UPLOAD_PATH=/uploads
GRAPHQL_PATH=/graphql

⚠️ Security Note: Never commit .env to version control. Keep your credentials safe!

🧪 Testing with Dummy Data

Generate 500 realistic test users with the included Python script:

cd neo4j
python test.py

# Access Neo4j container
docker exec -it matcha-neo4j bash
cypher-shell -u {neo4j_username} -p {neo4j_password} -f /docker-entrypoint-initdb.d/init_profiles.cypher