novatorem / Cover-Hack

Create custom cover letters that you can customize per application

Cover Hack

A custom cover letter creator that allows you to dynamically create cover letters through the use of a custom markdown solution. This webapp was built with React, Node, and MongoDB - alongside some other frameworks like express, bcrypt, and mui.

Use it here!

Preview:

Overview

When writing templates, you can use the custom symbols below to insert interactive modules in the cover letter.

Name	Text	Symbol	Comment
Input	{_}	_____	Creates an input field
Selector	{.../.../...}	___ ↓	Allows you to select from any number of text
Paragraph Data	{Title|Paragraph Text}		Fills paragraph data to be picked by a field
Paragraph Field	{*}	☰	Creates a paragraph selector to choose a set of data

Tech Features

Encrypted Login	Session Handling	State Zero
Adaptive UI	Single Page	Memory Optimization
Dynamic Editing	Custom Views	🚧 Auto Save

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Development Instructions

Setup

# install server dependencies in the root directory
npm install

# install frontend dependencies in the client directory
cd client
npm install

Alternatively, you can run npm run-script setup in the root directory which runs a script to execute all the above commands. This is a shortcut command defined in package.json.

# create a development build of React app
cd client
npm run build

# create Mongo database and run Express server in the root directory
mkdir mongo-data
mongod --dbpath mongo-data

# run the server on a separate terminal
node server.js

Development

During development, run the following commands for your app to reflect any changes in the code. Make sure mongo is running on a separate terminal.

# build the React app
cd client
npm run build

# go back to the root directory
cd ..

# run the server
node server.js

Alternatively, you can run npm run-script build-run in the root directory which runs a script to execute all the above commands. This is a shortcut command defined in package.json.

Directory Structure

Cover Hack
├── db
│   └── mongoose.js
├── models
│   └── ...
├── package.json
├── server.js
└── client
    ├── public
    │   ├── index.html
    │   └── ...
    ├── tests
    │   └── ...
    └── src
        ├── actions
        │   ├── ...
        ├── react-components
        │   └── ...
        ├── index.js
        ├── index.css
        ├── App.js
        ├── App.css
        ├── MainView.js
        ├── package.json
        └── serviceWorker.js

React Components

Each React component lives in a separate directory with its own index.js and styles.css. Import them from parent components as needed.

Styles

Unique styles associated with each React component are kept separate. If the same styles are shared between multiple React components, keep them in a top-level, shared CSS file (i.e. App.css) to avoid repeated styles.

Material UI

You can find more components here.

Note that you can override the default styles of these components by increasing CSS selector specificity.

Actions

To keep your index.js files clean and simple, import required methods from an associated action file. Following this structure can help organize your code and keep it manageable.

Statezero

Application state is maintained as a single, immutable, global state graph. See statezero documentation for more information.

Whenever the global state changes via actions, each component's filterState() method is invoked with a frozen copy of the new state and then its render() method is invoked.

Statezero makes it simple to read and update the global state in your app without having to pass around component states.

Deployment

MongoDB Atlas

1. Create a Project, and cluster (or use the default Project0 Sandbox Cluster)
2. In the left sidebar menu: In security, whitelist 0.0.0.0/0 (or select connect from anywhere)
3. Under the database access tab, add a user that has read/write access
4. Grab the connection string for your database and plug in your password

Glitch

In ⚩.env, set up the two variables below:

MONGODB_URI='<connection-string>'
PORT='3000'

When installing modules in glitch, use pnpm install instead of npm, as it would avoid using up the set amount of disk space.