Second Helpings

Overview

This is our third (and final) Makers Academy bootcamp group project. Our team was formed by a shared interest in building a "Tech for Good" web application. And so we've built Second Helpings, a website that connects businesses with left over food to charities looking for donations.

Team members

• Lizzy Ballantine
• Yousuf Mohamed
• Paul Rainsford
• Nicola Carroll
• Zainab Baruud

Technologies and tools used

• MERN Stack (MongoDB, Express, React, Node)
• DB Hosting: MongoDB Atlas
• Testing: Jest unit testing on the backend, Cypress for integration testing
• API Testing: Insomnia, Postman
• APIs: Google API, Open Postcode Geo API
• CSS: Bootstrap
• Deployment: Heroku
• Business tools: Miro, Trello, EasyRetro

Initial domain model

Setting up databases

1. Create a .env file in the root directory

2. Set up a MongoDB account and follow the guide to setting up a database

3. In your root .env file write the following:

PORT = 5000
CONNECTION_URL = < MONGODB URL STRING HERE >
TEST_CONNECTION_URL = < MONGODB TEST URL STRING HERE >

Running the program locally

1. Clone this repo
2. In both the root directory and the client directory separately run

npm install

3. Set up a Google Maps API key which allows access to the Google Maps JavaScript API
4. In the client directory create .env containing

REACT_APP_ENDPOINT = < SERVER LOCAL HOST END POINT >
REACT_APP_MAP_API = < GOOGLE MAPS API KEY >

An example of the server's local host end point is http://localhost:5000/api/

Running the tests

When in the root directory, the command

npm test

will run Jest for the back-end unit tests. To run the integration tests with Cypress, the command is

cd client
npm test