HIRA Registration — MERN

Online short-course registration for HIRA Model School & Sakhakot Academy (DIT, Web Development, Pharmacy), rebuilt on the MERN stack.

• client/ — React (Vite) frontend. Same UI/design as before.
• server/ — Node + Express REST API, MongoDB (Mongoose), JWT admin auth.

The passport photo is optional and stored as a resized base64 string on the application document — no paid object storage (no Firebase Blaze, no S3).

Run locally

Prerequisites: Node 18+, and MongoDB (local mongod, or a free MongoDB Atlas cluster).

# 1) Backend
cd server
cp .env.example .env         # then edit: MONGODB_URI, JWT_SECRET, ADMIN_* , CORS_ORIGINS
npm install
npm run seed                 # creates the admin account from ADMIN_USERNAME/ADMIN_PASSWORD
npm run dev                  # http://localhost:5000

# 2) Frontend (new terminal)
cd client
npm install
npm run dev                  # http://localhost:5173  (proxies /api to :5000)

Registration form: http://localhost:5173/ · Staff dashboard: http://localhost:5173/admin

Test

cd server && npm test        # full REST API test against an in-memory MongoDB
cd client && npm run build   # verifies the React app compiles

Environment variables

server/.env — PORT, MONGODB_URI, JWT_SECRET, JWT_EXPIRES_IN, ADMIN_USERNAME, ADMIN_PASSWORD (used once by npm run seed), CORS_ORIGINS.

client/.env — VITE_API_URL (empty in dev; the backend origin in production).

Deploy (free tiers — do not require any paid service)

• Database: MongoDB Atlas M0 (free). Put its URI in server/.env → MONGODB_URI.
• Backend: Render / Railway / Cyclic free tier. Set the same env vars there.
• Frontend: Vercel. Set VITE_API_URL to the deployed backend URL, add the Vercel domain to the backend's CORS_ORIGINS.

Security

• Admin password is never stored in plain text — only a bcrypt hash, created by npm run seed from an env var.
• All secrets (DB URI, JWT secret, admin password) live in server/.env, never in the frontend or the database.
• Admin-only endpoints require a valid JWT; the public can only create applications.