CARA — Full-Stack E-Commerce

A full-stack clothing store: static HTML/CSS/JS frontend with a Node.js + Express + MongoDB backend. Built as a portfolio project.

Features

• Product catalog with search, category filtering, and pagination (server-side)
• User registration & login with JWT auth and bcrypt-hashed passwords
• Shopping cart, checkout, and order history
• Admin panel (/admin.html) — log in as admin to add / edit / delete products in the browser (full CRUD against a protected REST API)
• Server-side price validation on orders (never trusts client prices) and automatic stock decrement
• Newsletter subscription

Tech Stack

Frontend: HTML, CSS, vanilla JavaScript Backend: Node.js, Express, Mongoose Database: MongoDB Auth: JSON Web Tokens, bcryptjs

Project Structure

.
├── index.html, shop.html, admin.html, ...   # frontend pages
├── style.css, script.js                     # shared frontend assets
├── images/                                  # product & UI images
└── backend/
    ├── server.js          # entry point (DB connect + listen)
    ├── server-app.js      # Express app (routes + static serving)
    ├── models/            # user, product, order schemas
    ├── routes/            # auth, products, orders, cart, newsletter
    ├── middleware/auth.js # protect + adminOnly
    ├── seed.js            # seed sample products
    └── seedAdmin.js       # create an admin user

Run Locally

1. Install Node.js and have a MongoDB connection string (local or MongoDB Atlas).
2. From the backend/ folder:

   cd backend
   npm install
   cp .env.example .env        # then edit .env with your values
   npm run seed                # add sample products (optional)
   npm run seed:admin          # create admin@cara.com / admin123
   npm start

3. Open http://localhost:5000

Admin Access

• Go to /admin.html
• Log in with the admin account created by npm run seed:admin
• Default: admin@cara.com / admin123 (change via ADMIN_EMAIL / ADMIN_PASSWORD env vars)

Deploy (Render free tier)

1. Push this repo to GitHub.
2. Create a free MongoDB Atlas cluster; copy its connection string.
3. On Render: New → Web Service → connect the repo.
   • Build command: cd backend && npm install
   • Start command: cd backend && node server.js
   • Add env vars: MONGO_URI (Atlas string), JWT_SECRET (any long random string).
4. After first deploy, seed data from Render's Shell tab: cd backend && npm run seed && npm run seed:admin

Note: Render's free tier sleeps after ~15 min of inactivity; the first request after sleeping takes ~30s to wake.