Social network in React. A live demo for this project can be found at this address (petbook was already taken on heroku)

https://petster.herokuapp.com/

You can also install it yourself (see instructions below).

This is a simple social network that follows facebook in design. While there are still a lot of features to be implemented, a core functionality is there.

1. make sure you have node.js installed (petbook was tested on v8.9.1)

   https://nodejs.org/en/download/

2. clone the github repo

   git clone https://github.com/dryhten/petbook.git
   

3. install required node packages

   cd petbook
   npm install --save
   

4. install mongodb (petbook was tested with v3.4.10 community edition)

   https://docs.mongodb.com/manual/administration/install-community/

5. create a new database in mongodb (you can name it whatever you want) and then do one of the following two:

   • set MONGODB_URI env variable to the database URI (more on mongodb URI here https://docs.mongodb.com/manual/reference/connection-string/)

     if you don't know about env variables on linux, check this link on how to set them (a permanent solution would be better) https://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/set-environment-variable-linux/

     e.g.

     export MONGODB_URI=mongodb://<dbuser>:<dbpassword>@<dbhost>:<dbport>/<dbname>
     

   OR

   • edit petbook/my-util/connect.js, update credentials variable with the correct information, uncomment lines for connect_str, and use connect_str instead of process.env.MONGODB_URI in mongoose.connect() call

6. (optional) create indexes for your collections (this should improve the speed a little)

   run this from the mongo shell:

   # if no data in the db - first create the collections
   db.createCollection("Users")
   db.createCollection("Posts")
   db.createCollection("Photos")
   db.createCollection("FriendRequests")
   db.createCollection("Messages")
   
   db.Posts.createIndex({uid: 1})
   db.Photos.createIndex({owner: 1})
   db.Users.createIndex({email: 1})
   db.FriendRequests.createIndex({from: 1})
   db.FriendRequests.createIndex({to: 1})
   db.Messages.createIndex({from: 1})
   db.Messages.createIndex({to: 1})
   

   more on mongodb indexes https://docs.mongodb.com/manual/indexes/

7. insert the default avatar photo in the db

   db.Photos.insertOne({
    path: "/photos/default_avatar.png",
    owner: null,
    mimetype: "image/png",
    description: "default avatar picture",
    size: 12077,
   })
   

   find the ObjectId of the document you just inserted into the db

   db.Photos.find().pretty();
   

   copy the string from _id field into petbook/node_modules/my-util/photos.js in default_avatar_id variable (replace the current value)

8. bundle the react js files with webpack (since this is the same repo that runs on heroku, you'll need to run webpack with NODE_ENV=production; also, you might need to install webpack globally for this)

   NODE_ENV=production webpack
   

9. start the webserver

   node app.js
   

10. visit the website (port should be 5000)

    e.g. if you are running it on localhost

    http://127.0.0.1:5000/
    

11. (optional) since heroku won't allow image uploads on the website, petbook uses a private dropbox app to store the photos, so by default photo upload won't work; if you want to use photo upload you have two options:

    • use your own dropbox app, and then export the dropbox token to DROPBOX_TOKEN (as before with MONGODB_URI)

    • change app.js to use local files (this would be a long list of instructions, but it's not that hard since this was the initial functionality of petbook; also, local photos will be deleted automatically from the disk when you remove them from the website so you don't need to worry about that)