Eventonica 🎉

Eventonica is a full-stack web application with CRUD for managing, discovering, and organizing events. Built with a robust PERN stack (PostgreSQL, Express, React, Node.js), this application allows users to seamlessly add events, assign categories, update details, search by name, and track their favorite activities.

🛠️ Built With

✨ Features

• Interactive Dashboard: View a comprehensive list of all events with associated categories, descriptions, and timestamps.
• Event Management (CRUD): Create, read, update, and delete events directly from the UI.
• Search & Filter: Search for specific events by name, or toggle the view to show only your favorited events.
• Categorization: Organize events by category (e.g., Music, Tech, Sports), complete with custom color-coding and emojis.
• Favorites System: Quickly "heart" or "un-heart" events to keep track of your top picks.

📸 Screenshots

(Replace these placeholder links with actual paths to your screenshots/gifs once uploaded to your repository)

Dashboard View	Add/Edit Event

Search & Filter Functionality

💻 Tech Stack

Frontend:

• React 18 (Bootstrapped with Vite)
• React Router DOM
• Bootstrap / React-Bootstrap for responsive styling
• React Icons & Moment.js for UI enhancements

Backend:

• Node.js & Express.js
• PostgreSQL
• pg (node-postgres) for database connections
• Cors & Body-Parser

🔌 API Reference

The backend exposes the following RESTful endpoints under /api:

Method	Endpoint	Description
GET	/api/events	Fetches all events (accepts ?searchInput= query to filter by name).
POST	/api/events	Creates a new event.
PATCH	/api/events/:id	Updates details of an existing event.
PUT	/api/events/:id/favorites	Toggles the favorite (is_favorite) status of an event.
DELETE	/api/events/:id	Deletes a specific event from the database.
GET	/api/categories	Fetches the list of all available categories.

🔐 Environment Variables

To run this project, you will need to add the following environment variables to a .env file located in your server/ directory:

# Your PostgreSQL Database URI
VITE_DB_URI="postgresql://<user>:<password>@localhost/<database>"

# Optional: Port for the Express server (Defaults to 3000)
PORT=3000

🚀 How to Run Locally

Follow these steps to get the development environment running on your machine:

Clone the repository

    git clone [https://github.com/LilRed92/eventonica.git](https://github.com/LilRed92/eventonica.git)
    cd eventonica

Setup the Database

Ensure PostgreSQL is running on your machine. Load the provided database dump to create the necessary schemas and initial category data:

psql -U postgres -d postgres -f server/db/eventonica_dump.sql

(Note: Replace postgres with your specific database username/database if different).

Install Dependencies

You will need to install the dependencies for both the client and the server.

# Install server dependencies
cd server
npm install

# Install client dependencies
cd ../client
npm install

Start the Application

The server's package.json includes a concurrently script that will launch both the Express backend and the Vite frontend at the same time.

# Navigate back to the server directory if you aren't already there
cd ../server

# Start both servers
npm run dev

• The frontend will be running on http://localhost:5173

• The backend API will be listening on http://localhost:3000

Future Feature Updates

• Transition to TypeScript: Migrate the existing JavaScript codebase to TypeScript to improve type safety, code maintainability, and the overall developer experience.
• Expand Database Schema: Add a users table to the PostgreSQL database to support individual user profiles.
• Implement User Favorites: Create a user_favorites join table to establish a many-to-many relationship, allowing multiple users to maintain their own unique lists of favorited events.
• Integrate Authentication: Implement secure user authentication to allow individuals to register, log in, and manage their personalized event dashboards.
• Add Comprehensive Testing: Write and implement automated tests across the frontend, backend, and API to ensure application reliability.
• Deploy Application: Deploy the completed application to a cloud hosting platform for live, public access.