🧠 IE Business Directory – Backend

📦 Description

This backend project powers the IE Business Directory — a scalable and secure RESTful API built using Node.js, Express, and MongoDB. It offers full CRUD functionality for users and business cards, robust authentication and authorization with JWT, and data validation via Joi. Designed to integrate seamlessly with a React-based frontend, it supports multi-database environments for flexible development and production configurations.

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🚀 Features

• 🔐 User Authentication — Register, Login, and token-based session handling
• 🧾 CRUD Operations — For both Users and Business Cards
• ❤️ Like / Unlike Cards
• 🧪 Input Validation — Using Joi
• 🔑 Role-Based Access Control
• 🛡️ Middleware-Driven Security — Auth guards and ownership verification
• ⚙️ Multi-DB Support — Easily toggle between different database environments (e.g., campus vs. personal)
• 🪵 File Logger — Server-side error logging
• 🌱 DB Seeding — For quick development bootstrapping

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🛠️ Tech Stack

Core Stack

• Node.js + Express — Backend framework
• MongoDB + Mongoose — Database & ODM
• JWT (jsonwebtoken) — Secure token authentication
• Joi — Data validation

Dev & Utilities

• bcryptjs — Password hashing
• chalk — Colorized terminal logs
• dotenv — Environment variable management
• cors — Cross-origin resource sharing
• morgan — HTTP request logger
• nodemon — Live development server
• lodash — Utility library
• cross-env — Environment variable scripting

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🖥️ Live Demo UI

👉 Explore the App (Frontend)

🔄 Switch between backends: Use the dropdown in the top-left of the Navbar to toggle API sources.
🧼 Note: Switching backends logs the user out to maintain consistency and security.

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📡 API Endpoints

🔐 Auth Routes

• POST /api/users/login – Login and receive JWT
• POST /api/users/ – Register a new user

👤 User Routes

• GET /api/users/ – Get all users (Admin only)
• GET /api/users/:id – Get user by ID (Owner or Admin)
• PUT /api/users/:id – Update user details (Owner only)
• PATCH /api/users/:id – Update business status (Owner only)
• DELETE /api/users/:id – Delete user (Owner or Admin)

🗂️ Card Routes

• GET /api/cards/ – Get all business cards
• GET /api/cards/my-cards – Get current user's cards
• GET /api/cards/:id – Get a single card
• POST /api/cards/ – Create a new card (Business users)
• PUT /api/cards/:id – Edit a card (Owner only)
• PATCH /api/cards/:id – Like/unlike card (Registered users)
• DELETE /api/cards/:id – Remove card (Owner or Admin)