AnchorEats

A full-stack web application that provides helpful dining features for Vanderbilt students, including a meal swipe calculator and an interactive Taste of Nashville restaurant map.

Table of Contents

• Overview
• Features
• Tech Stack
• Prerequisites
• Setup
• API Endpoints
• Environment Variables
• Testing
• Design
• Deployment

Overview

AnchorEats was created to solve common challenges faced by Vanderbilt students:

• Meal Swipe Management: Near the end of the semester, I was getting tired of calculating the number of days and doing the math to find out how many meal swipes I needed to use. I noticed several of my friends mentioned doing these calculations as well, so I wanted to make a tool to make doing the math faster.
• Restaurant Map: As for the Taste of Nashville map, there were many times during the school year where I wanted to eat out instead of going to a dining hall, but I was unfamiliar with the eligible meal money restaurants. I wished that there was a tool or map that allowed me to see only Taste of Nashville restaurants and also showed the closest restaurants to my location.

Features

• Meal Swipe Calculator: Calculate how many swipes you need to use daily to reach zero by semester's end (accounting for breaks & Farmers' Market)
• Interactive Map: Visual display of all Taste of Nashville restaurants with your current location
• Restaurant Search: Search Taste of Nashville restaurants by name or description
• Proximity Search: Find the 5 closest Taste of Nashville restaurants to your current location
• Dining Hall Info: View Vanderbilt dining hall menus and hours

Tech Stack

Frontend

• React - UI framework
• Vite - Build tool and development server
• Tailwind CSS - Utility-first CSS framework
• daisyUI - Tailwind CSS component library

Backend

• Node.js - Runtime environment
• Express - Web framework
• MongoDB - Database

Project Structure

anchor-eats/
├── backend/
│   ├── src/
│   │   ├── config/
│   │   ├── controllers/
│   │   ├── models/
│   │   ├── routes/
│   │   ├── seeding/
│   │   └── server.js        # Express app entry point
│   ├── .env
│   └── package.json
│
├── frontend/
│   ├── public/
│   ├── src/
│   │   ├── components/
│   │   ├── lib/
│   │   ├── pages/
│   │   ├── App.jsx
│   │   └── main.jsx
│   ├── .env
│   ├── index.html
│   ├── package.json
│   ├── tailwind.config.js
│   └── vite.config.js
│
├── .gitignore
└── README.md

Prerequisites

• Node.js — download from nodejs.org (LTS version recommended)
• A MongoDB database — create a free cluster at MongoDB Atlas and grab the connection string

Setup

1. Install dependencies in both directories:

   cd backend && npm install
   cd frontend && npm install

2. Create a .env file in backend/ with the required variables (see Environment Variables).

3. Start the backend and frontend in separate terminals:

   # Terminal 1
   cd backend
   npm run dev
   
   # Terminal 2
   cd frontend
   npm run dev

API Endpoints

All API endpoints are prefixed with /api:

Restaurants

Get All Restaurant Data

GET /api/data

Description: Retrieves all Taste of Nashville restaurant information including name, description, location coordinates, hours, and website.

Response Example:

[
  {
    "_id": "...",
    "name": "Restaurant Name",
    "description": "Restaurant description",
    "website": "https://example.com",
    "location": {
      "lat": 36.1234,
      "lng": -86.5678
    },
    "hours": {
      "mon": [{ "open": "11:00 AM", "close": "10:00 PM" }],
      "tue": [{ "open": "11:00 AM", "close": "10:00 PM" }],
      ...
    }
  }
]

Feedback

Get All Feedback

GET /api/feedback

Description: Retrieves all feedback entries, sorted by most recent first.

Response Example:

{
  "success": true,
  "message": "Feedback successfully fetched!",
  "feedback": [
    {
      "_id": "...",
      "text": "Great app!",
      "author": "Jane Doe",
      "email": "jane@example.com",
      "createdAt": "2025-01-01T00:00:00.000Z"
    }
  ]
}

Submit Feedback

POST /api/feedback

Description: Submits a new feedback entry.

Request Body:

{
  "text": "Your feedback here",
  "author": "Your Name",
  "email": "your@email.com"
}

text is required. author and email are optional.

Response Example:

{
  "success": true,
  "message": "Feedback added successfully!",
  "feedback": {
    "_id": "...",
    "text": "Your feedback here",
    "author": "Your Name",
    "email": "your@email.com",
    "createdAt": "2025-01-01T00:00:00.000Z"
  }
}

Environment Variables

Backend (backend/.env)

Variable	Required locally	Description
MONGO_URI	Yes	MongoDB Atlas connection string
ANALYTICS_USERNAME	Yes	Admin username for the analytics page
ANALYTICS_PASSWORD	Yes	Admin password for the analytics page
ANALYTICS_SECRET	Yes	Bearer token returned after a successful analytics login
FRONTEND_URL	No	Allowed CORS origin — falls back to http://localhost:5173
PORT	No	Server port — falls back to 5001

Frontend (frontend/.env)

Variable	Required locally	Description
VITE_API_URL	No	Backend base URL — falls back to http://localhost:5001/api

Testing

Tests are written for the backend using Vitest and Supertest. Each test suite runs against an in-memory MongoDB instance (via mongodb-memory-server), so no real database connection is needed.

Test Suites

File	What it covers
tests/Restaurant.test.js	Restaurant model validation
tests/Feedback.test.js	Feedback model validation
tests/restaurantRoutes.test.js	GET /api/data
tests/feedbackRoutes.test.js	GET /api/feedback, POST /api/feedback
tests/analyticsRoutes.test.js	POST /api/analytics/auth, GET /api/analytics, POST /api/analytics

Running Tests

All commands should be run from the backend/ directory.

# Run tests once
npm run test:ci

# Run tests in watch mode
npm run test

# Open the Vitest UI
npm run test:ui

# Run tests with coverage report
npm run test:coverage

CI

Tests run automatically on every push and pull request to main via GitHub Actions.

Design

Figma design file: View Design

Deployment

• Frontend: Vercel
• Backend: Render

Required Environment Variables for Deployment

Render (backend) — set these in the Render dashboard under Environment:

Variable	Value
MONGO_URI	Your MongoDB Atlas connection string
FRONTEND_URL	Your Vercel app URL (e.g. https://your-app.vercel.app)
ANALYTICS_USERNAME	Your chosen admin username
ANALYTICS_PASSWORD	Your chosen admin password
ANALYTICS_SECRET	A long random string used as a bearer token

Vercel (frontend) — set these in the Vercel dashboard under Settings → Environment Variables:

Variable	Value
VITE_API_URL	Your Render backend URL + /api (e.g. https://your-app.onrender.com/api)