Katherine-KM/Pettopia

Pettopia - website link

Pettopia.webm

An application to act as a one-stop shop for Pet products
Giving customers ability to easily browse and/or buy products, create a profile with saved products from previous sessions, make payments, etc.
Giving product owners ability to add products, update price
An admin should be able to control

There are 2 separate projects - frontend and backend
The frontend holds UI logic as well as communicating with the backend on user actions
The backend holds the implementation for CRUD operations with database
Steps to run frontend react project
- cd frontend
- npm i to install relevant packages (react, helper libraries with react)
- npm start to launch the application
Steps to run backend express application
- add the following environment variables in a .env file in the backend directory
  - CLIENT_URL this should equal the url on which frontend has been launched e.g. http://localhost:3000
  - MONGODB_CONNECTION_STRING this should be the mongodb connection string with username, password and database name
  - PORT the port number on which express app is listening for incoming requests e.g 5000
  - STRIPE_KEY this is a key required for being able to create stripe checkout session. Steps to create stripe key :
- cd backend
- npm i
- npm start

The frontend is deployed as a 'static service' on render while backend is deployed as a 'Web Service' on render platform
Frontend / Website URL
Backend / API endpoint URL

Products data was inserted in MongoDB Atlas instance prior to project running the application.
The product data used was a subset of products in the pet categories on Walmart.com
In order to collect the data, the Walmart Search Api service on the website SerpApi. This is a website which allows for scraping of products from many places. For e.g. Google Search results, eBay products.
A subset of Walmart product data was inserted into MongoDB Atlas instance using some nodejs scripts. Found in dbScripts directory in the backend project. The api keys in each of the files need to modified by anyone who wants to use the script. The SerpApi.com website allows to create a free account with 100 free search requests.
The populateProductsCollection.js and populateProductDetailsCollectionUsingSerpApi.js

For starters, we want to add data from various sources and many more categories
Real-time prices for products by web scraping products at regular intervals through daily background jobs
Adding ability for sellers to upload products
Product recommendations for users based on search and purchase history