GiftLink

A full-stack MERN application that connects people giving away household items they no longer need with people who would rather reuse than buy new. List a gift, browse what's nearby, filter by category and condition, and message the giver.

Built as the capstone project for the IBM Full Stack Software Developer Professional Certificate (Coursera).

Architecture

Three independently deployable services:

├── giftlink-frontend/   React 18 SPA — Bootstrap 5, React Router 6
├── giftlink-backend/    Express REST API — MongoDB, JWT auth, Pino logging
└── sentiment/           Standalone sentiment-analysis microservice for reviews

The frontend talks to the backend over REST. The backend delegates review sentiment scoring to the sentiment service, keeping that concern out of the main API — so it can be scaled or replaced without touching the core application.

Tech Stack

Frontend — React 18 · React Router 6 · React Bootstrap · react-datepicker

Backend — Express 4 · MongoDB 6 (native driver) · jsonwebtoken · bcryptjs · express-validator · Pino structured logging · CORS

Testing — Mocha · Chai · Sinon · Supertest (backend) · React Testing Library (frontend)

CI/CD — GitHub Actions: JSHint linting on the backend, production build verification on the client

Features

• Gift listings — post items with category, condition, and images; browse the full catalogue
• Search & filter — dedicated search routes with category, condition, and age filtering
• Authentication — JWT-based registration and login, passwords hashed with bcrypt
• Input validation — express-validator on every write path
• Sentiment analysis — reviews scored by a separate microservice
• Structured logging — Pino with pretty-printing in development

API Routes

Router	Responsibility
authRoutes.js	Registration, login, JWT issuance, profile updates
giftRoutes.js	Gift CRUD — list, detail, create
searchRoutes.js	Filtered search across the gift catalogue

Getting Started

Prerequisites: Node.js 18+, a MongoDB instance (local or Atlas)

1. Backend

cd giftlink-backend
npm install
cp .env.sample .env    # then fill in your own values
npm run dev

Required environment variables:

Variable	Description
MONGO_URL	MongoDB connection string
DB_NAME	Database name
JWT_SECRET	Secret used to sign JWTs — use a long random value

2. Sentiment service

cd sentiment
npm install
node index.js

3. Frontend

cd giftlink-frontend
npm install
cp .env.sample .env    # set REACT_APP_BACKEND_URL
npm start

The app runs on http://localhost:3000.

Testing

cd giftlink-backend && npm test    # Mocha + Chai + Supertest
cd giftlink-frontend && npm test   # React Testing Library

License

Apache 2.0