📔 CollabStories

A web platform for real-time collaborative storytelling, built with ASP.NET Core Web API for the backend and React for the frontend.

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✨ Features

• Story Creation and Collaboration
  • Authors can create new stories and write together in real-time.
• Story Participants
  • Each story session has a user owner who manages the session and authors who contribute to the story. The owner is always the first author.
• Turn-Based Writing
  • Each author has a limited time per turn, and the next user continues writing after the turn ends.
  • Each session has it own timer validated on the backend.
• Session Rules Management
  • Owners can define session parameters: duration, maximum authors, etc.
• Authentication
  • Users can register and log in securely using JWT authentication.
• Testing
  • The backend includes unit tests to validate individual components and integration tests to ensure end-to-end functionality.

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📸 Media

Backend

Account Endpoints

Story Endpoints

Data Flow Diagram

Database Diagram

Chat Demo (temporary)

Will be removed after frontend completion, this is just a prototype.

chat-demo-video.mp4

Frontend

Building ...

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🛠 Setup

Prerequisites

• .NET 8 SDK (Not needed if API will be running only inside docker container).
• Docker
• Node.js

Steps (Backend)

1. Clone the repository.
2. Inside backend/, copy .env.example to .env.
   • In .env, update the passwords for MSSQL_PASSWORD, MSSQL_CONNECTION_STRING and JWT_SECRET, if you want to change the default values.
3. Open a terminal and navigate to the backend/ directory.
4. Run the following command to initialize database inside container.

   docker compose up db --build

5. Configure User Secrets (optional)
   • You may skip this step if API will be running only inside container and not locally.
   • Navigate to backend/api inside the terminal.
   • Set the required secrets using the following commands (you can change the password in the first three commands, just like in the .env file, seen in step 2):

     dotnet user-secrets set "ConnectionStrings:DefaultConnection" "Server=localhost,1434; Database=CollabStoriesDB; MultipleActiveResultSets=True;User ID=sa;Password='examplePassword1234'; Encrypt=False;"
     dotnet user-secrets set "ConnectionStrings:DbTestConnection" "Server=localhost,1434; Database=CollabStoriesDBTest; MultipleActiveResultSets=True;User ID=sa;Password='examplePassword1234'; Encrypt=False;"
     dotnet user-secrets set "JwtConfig:Secret" "a-string-secret-at-least-256-bits-long"
     dotnet user-secrets set "JwtConfig:ValidIssuer" "http://localhost:5014/"
     dotnet user-secrets set "JwtConfig:ValidAudiences" "http://localhost:5014/"

6. Run the API:
   1. Using Docker
      • Navigate to the backend/ directory.
      • Run the docker command:

        docker compose up --build
        

      • ⚠️ Note: On the first run, the application will seed the database. Wait until you see the confirmation in the console before making API requests.
   2. Locally
      • In the backend/api/ directory.
      • Run the application:

        dotnet run

      • ⚠️ Note: On the first run, the application will seed the database. Wait until you see the confirmation in the console before making API requests.
7. Access the API documentation:
   • Open your browser and navigate to http://localhost:5014/swagger to view the Swagger API documentation.

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⚙ Technologies

Backend

• Language: C#
• Framework: ASP.NET Core Web API 8
• Database: SQL Server 2022
• ORM: Entity Framework Core 8
• Authentication: JWT with ASP.NET Identity
• Real-time Communication: SignalR
• Containerization: Docker
• Testing: xUnit
• Fake Data: Bogus
• API Documentation: Swagger

Frontend

• Languages: JavaScript, HTML, CSS
• Frameworks: React, Vue
• Real-time Communication: SignalR Client

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🙋‍♂️ Authors

• Rafael Silva - API & Database (LinkedIn)
• Pedro Sousa - Frontend (LinkedIn)