E-Ticket Booking Platform

A comprehensive, AI-powered e-ticket booking platform designed for Sri Lanka. This platform allows users to browse events, select seats interactively, purchase tickets securely, and manage their bookings. It features a modern frontend, a robust Node.js API, and a Python microservice for AI-driven capabilities such as personalized event recommendations and an intelligent chatbot assistant.

✨ Features

• Event Discovery: Browse and search for upcoming events by category, location, and date.
• Interactive Seat Selection: View real-time seat availability and select seats on an interactive map.
• Secure Booking System: Temporary seat locking during checkout to prevent double-booking.
• QR Code Ticketing: Generates unique QR codes for purchased tickets.
• AI Event Assistant: Integrated chatbot (powered by Qwen2.5-VL via Hugging Face) to answer user queries about events, pricing, and bookings.
• AI Recommendations: Personalized event recommendations based on user booking history, and similar event suggestions using NLP (TF-IDF & Cosine Similarity).
• Automated Content Generation: AI-generated professional event descriptions for organizers.
• Dashboard: Manage bookings, view purchased tickets, and access QR codes.

🛠️ Tech Stack

Frontend

• Framework: React 19 + Vite
• Styling: Tailwind CSS
• State Management: Zustand, React Query
• Routing: React Router DOM
• Other Tools: Axios, QRCode.react, React Markdown

Backend (Main API)

• Runtime: Node.js
• Framework: Express.js
• Database: MongoDB (Mongoose)
• Cache / Concurrency: Redis (ioredis) for seat locking mechanisms
• Authentication: JWT (JSON Web Tokens) & bcryptjs

Backend (AI Microservice)

• Language: Python
• Framework: Flask
• Database: MongoDB (PyMongo)
• Machine Learning: scikit-learn (TF-IDF, Cosine Similarity)
• AI Integration: OpenAI SDK targeting Hugging Face inference endpoints (Qwen)

📁 Project Structure

eticket-platform/
├── frontend/             # React (Vite) frontend application
│   ├── src/              # React components, pages, and store
│   ├── package.json      # Frontend dependencies
│   └── vite.config.js    # Vite configuration
├── backend/              # Node.js Express API & Python Flask API
│   ├── src/              # Node.js API source code (controllers, routes, models)
│   ├── server.js         # Entry point for the Node.js API
│   ├── app.py            # Entry point for the Python AI Microservice
│   ├── package.json      # Node.js dependencies
│   └── requirements.txt  # Python dependencies
└── README.md             # This documentation file

📋 Prerequisites

Before you begin, ensure you have the following installed:

• Node.js (v18 or higher)
• Python (v3.8 or higher)
• MongoDB (Local or Atlas URL)
• Redis (Local or Cloud URL)
• A Hugging Face account and Access Token (for AI features)

🚀 Getting Started

1. Clone the Repository

git clone <repository-url>
cd eticket-platform

2. Setup the Node.js Backend (Main API)

1. Navigate to the backend directory:

   cd backend

2. Install dependencies:

   npm install

3. Create a .env file in the backend directory and add the following variables:

   PORT=5000
   MONGO_URI=your_mongodb_connection_string
   REDIS_URL=your_redis_connection_string
   JWT_SECRET=your_jwt_secret
   CLIENT_URL=http://localhost:5173
   FRONTEND_URL=http://localhost:5173

4. Start the Node.js server:

   npm run dev

3. Setup the Python Backend (AI Microservice)

1. Stay in the backend directory (or open a new terminal in the backend directory).
2. Create and activate a virtual environment (optional but recommended):

   python -m venv venv
   source venv/bin/activate  # On Windows use `venv\Scripts\activate`

3. Install Python dependencies:

   pip install -r requirements.txt

4. Update the .env file in the backend directory to include variables for Python:

   HF_TOKEN=your_hugging_face_access_token

5. Start the Flask server:

   python app.py

   The Python API will run on http://localhost:5001 by default.

4. Setup the Frontend

1. Open a new terminal and navigate to the frontend directory:

   cd frontend

2. Install dependencies:

   npm install

3. Create a .env file in the frontend directory (if needed) to specify your API URLs:

   VITE_API_BASE_URL=http://localhost:5000/api
   VITE_AI_API_BASE_URL=http://localhost:5001

   (Check the frontend codebase for exact environment variable names).
4. Start the development server:

   npm run dev

🤝 Contributing

Contributions are welcome! Please feel free to submit a Pull Request.

📄 License

This project is licensed under the ISC License.