Aliferous Social🧡

A social media web application with features like creating posts, adding likes and unlikes, following users, deleting posts, commenting on posts etc.

Web-Application features✨

• Authentication - Register, Login, Logout

• Post - Create and Delete Posts

• Feed - View posts of users you follow

• Explore - View posts of all users

• Profile - View your own profile as well as of other users. Profile consists of all the posts, no. of followers and following and an option to change your profile picture

• Activity - Like, unlike and comment on posts. You can also follow other users.

• Search - Search profiles of other users by searching using their email-id

• Forgot Password - Reset your password using sendgrid API

Aliferous-social is Starware.
This means you're free to use the project, as long as you star its GitHub repository.
Your appreciation makes us grow and glow up. ⭐

Prerequisites 👨‍💻

Install Node JS

Refer to https://nodejs.org/en/ to install nodejs

Install create-react-app

Install create-react-app npm package globally. This will help to easily run the project and also build the source files easily. Use the following command to install create-react-app

npm install -g create-react-app

Cloning and Running the Application in local 💻

Clone the project in localhost

git clone https://github.com/sumana2001/social-media.git

Navigate to client folder

cd client

Install all the npm packages. Go into the client folder and type the following command to install all npm packages

npm install

In order to run the application Type the following command

npm start

The Application Runs on localhost:3000

Sendgrid API

Create a free account on sendgrid and generate an API key

To spin up the backend server

Navigate to the main project folder in a seperate terminal. Then install all npm packages

npm install 

If you don't have nodemon globally installed on your system, install it so the server can autorefresh

npm install -g nodemon

Now it's time to spin up the backend server. Run the lines

nodemon app.js

If you get an error immediately, don't worry. We will connect to the MongoDB database.

Note: The Server Runs on localhost:5000

Connecting to the Database

Spin up your cluster in MongoDB and replace your connection with URI Make a file config/dev.js and write the following:

module.exports={
    MONGOURI:"<YOUR CONNECTION URI HERE>",
    JWT_SECRET:"blahblahabcd",
    SENDGRID_API:"<YOUR SENDGRID API HERE>",
    EMAIL_URL: "http://localhost:3000"
}

If you face any problems, refer to the MongoDB website.

Connecting to the Database if you haven't used MongoDB Atlas before

Install the MongoDB Node.js Driver with the following command:

npm install mongodb

Set up a MongoDB Atlas Database by following this short MongoDB setup video till the 3:20 mark. Stop after that mark!

On your Cluster home page, select CONNECT > Connect your application.

1. Select Node.js in the drop down for your driver, and select the latest version.
2. Then, copy the connecting string (URI).
3. Make a file config/dev.js and write the following:

module.exports={
    MONGOURI:"<YOUR CONNECTION URI HERE>",
    JWT_SECRET:"blahblahabcd"
    SENDGRID_API:"<YOUR SENDGRID API HERE>",
    EMAIL_URL: "http://localhost:3000"
}

4. Paste the connection string you copied as the value of mongoURI.
5. Replace the <password> section of the string with your Database Access password. Viola, your server should now successfuly connect to MongoDB!