Nourish — Food Donation Platform

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Table of contents

• What is this project?
• Why it’s useful
• Tech stack
• Quick start
  • Prerequisites
  • Backend setup
  • Frontend setup
  • Database & Prisma
• API overview
• Development notes & useful scripts
• Where to get help
• Contributing & maintainers
• Acknowledgements

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What is this project?

Nourish is a full-stack food donation platform that connects donors, delivery riders, and beneficiary organisations. The backend (Express + Prisma) exposes APIs for authentication, donations, and admin reporting; the frontend is a Vite + React app that consumes those APIs.

Why it’s useful

• Centralises food donation workflows: donors, riders, and organisations.
• Automated assignment logic for organisations and available riders.
• Lightweight, developer-friendly stack for rapid iteration (Prisma, Express, Vite, React).

Tech stack

• Backend: Node.js, Express, Prisma, PostgreSQL
• Frontend: Vite, React, TypeScript, Tailwind CSS
• Auth: JWT

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Quick start

A short guide to get the project running locally.

Prerequisites

• Node.js (>= 18) and npm
• PostgreSQL database
• Optional: pnpm or yarn

Backend setup

1. Open terminal and install dependencies:

cd backend
npm install

2. Create a .env file in backend/ with at least the following variables:

DATABASE_URL=postgresql://USER:PASSWORD@HOST:PORT/DATABASE
JWT_SECRET=replace_with_a_secure_secret
PORT=5000 # optional

3. Run Prisma migrations (development):

# inside backend/
npx prisma migrate dev --name init
# or to apply already-created migrations in CI/production
# npx prisma migrate deploy

4. (Optional) Seed the database with an admin user:

# inside backend/
node prisma/seed.js

5. Start the backend dev server:

cd backend
npm run dev
# server runs on http://localhost:5000 by default

Frontend setup

1. Install dependencies and start dev server:

cd frontend
npm install
npm run dev
# app served by Vite, typically on http://localhost:5173

Note: The frontend's API base URL is http://localhost:5000/api by default (see frontend/src/lib/api.ts). Ensure the backend is running on PORT=5000 or update the base URL accordingly.

Database & Prisma

• Schema file: backend/prisma/schema.prisma
• Run interactive DB GUI:

cd backend
npx prisma studio

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API overview

This is a short reference for common endpoints. See code in backend/src/controllers and backend/src/routes for details.

• Authentication

  • POST /api/auth/signup — Register a user (roles: DONOR, RIDER, ORGANISATION, ADMIN)
  • POST /api/auth/login — Login (returns JWT token)

• Donations

  • POST /api/donations/ — Create a donation (Auth required — Bearer <token>)
  • GET /api/donations/my — Donor's donations (Auth)
  • GET /api/donations/rider — Rider's assigned/delivering donations (Auth)
  • PATCH /api/donations/:id/rider-action — Rider accepts/rejects assignment (Auth)
  • PATCH /api/donations/:id/status — Update donation status (Auth)
  • GET /api/donations/organisation — Organisation's donations (Auth)

• Admin

  • GET /api/admin/stats — Aggregated stats and recent items
  • GET /api/admin/donations — All donations
  • GET /api/admin/donations/:id — Donation details
  • GET /api/admin/donors|riders|organisations — Lists and details

Example: Signup & Login

# Signup
curl -X POST http://localhost:5000/api/auth/signup \
  -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  -d '{"role":"DONOR","name":"Alice","email":"alice@example.com","password":"secret"}'

# Login
curl -X POST http://localhost:5000/api/auth/login \
  -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  -d '{"email":"alice@example.com","password":"secret","role":"DONOR"}'
# response contains `token` — include as `Authorization: Bearer <token>` in subsequent requests

Example: Create donation

curl -X POST http://localhost:5000/api/donations/ \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer <token>" \
  -d '{
    "pickupTime":"2025-12-21T10:00:00.000Z",
    "notes":"Extra bread and fruits",
    "foodItems":[{"name":"Bread","quantity":10,"unit":"loaves","category":"Bakery"}]
  }'

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Development notes & useful scripts

• Backend
  • npm run dev — Start Express server with nodemon (from backend/)
  • Prisma commands: npx prisma migrate dev, npx prisma studio
• Frontend
  • npm run dev — Start Vite dev server (from frontend/)
  • npm run build — Create production build

Useful file pointers:

• backend/src/app.js — Express app (registered routes)
• backend/src/routes/* — Routes for auth, donations, admin
• backend/src/controllers/* — API logic
• backend/prisma/schema.prisma — DB models
• frontend/src/lib/api.ts — Axios instance and base API URL

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