WanderInn – Full-Stack Travel Listing Platform

A full-stack travel listing web application where users can explore, create, manage and review travel stays. Built with MVC architecture focusing on secure authentication, robust error handling and clean backend design.

🔗 Live Demo: https://wanderinn-tu1m.onrender.com/listings

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Screenshots

Features

API & Database:

• 14 RESTful API endpoints across 3 route modules — listings, reviews and users
• 3 Mongoose schemas (User, Listing, Review) with ObjectId references modeling one-to-many relationships
• Cascade middleware deletes associated reviews when a listing is removed
• Cloud database hosted on MongoDB Atlas for persistent, production-ready storage

Authentication & Authorization:

• Session-based authentication using Passport.js with passport-local strategy
• express-session configured with httpOnly cookies and 7-day session expiry to prevent XSS and session hijacking
• 6 custom middleware functions with clear separation of concerns — isLoggedIn (authentication), isOwner and isReviewAuthor (authorization), validateListing and validateReview (Joi-based input validation), and saveRedirectUrl (preserving intended destination before login redirect)

Validation & Error Handling:

• Joi validation middleware on all listing and review routes rejecting invalid or incomplete inputs server-side
• Custom ExpressError class with HTTP status codes for structured error responses
• wrapAsync utility eliminating repetitive try-catch blocks across all async routes
• Centralized error middleware as single source of truth for all error responses

Testing & Deployment:

• 10+ automated test cases written using Jest and Supertest covering auth flows, CRUD operations and protected route access
• Manual testing via Postman and Hoppscotch across all 14 endpoints
• Deployed on Render with MongoDB Atlas, achieving 1.22s cold load on live environment
• Environment variables managed via dotenv, keeping credentials out of source code

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Tech Stack

Layer	Technology
Backend	Node.js, Express.js
Database	MongoDB Atlas, Mongoose
Frontend	EJS, Bootstrap
Authentication	Passport.js, express-session
Validation	Joi
Testing	Jest, Supertest
Deployment	Render

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Getting Started

Prerequisites

• Node.js v18+
• MongoDB Atlas account

Installation

git clone https://github.com/Arjun-Sreedhar/major-project.git
cd major-project
npm install

Run Locally

node app.js

Visit http://localhost:8080

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API Overview

Method	Route	Description	Auth Required
GET	/listings	Get all listings	No
POST	/listings	Create new listing	Yes
GET	/listings/:id	Get single listing	No
PUT	/listings/:id	Update listing	Yes (Owner)
DELETE	/listings/:id	Delete listing	Yes (Owner)
POST	/listings/:id/reviews	Add review	Yes
DELETE	/listings/:id/reviews/:rid	Delete review	Yes (Author)
GET	/login	Login page	No
POST	/login	Authenticate user	No
GET	/signup	Signup page	No
POST	/signup	Register user	No
GET	/logout	Logout user	Yes

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Key Technical Decisions

• Passport.js over JWT — Session-based auth is stateful and better suited for server-rendered EJS applications
• MongoDB Atlas — Cloud-hosted database for persistent production storage
• wrapAsync utility — Eliminates repetitive try-catch blocks across all async route handlers
• Joi validation — Schema-based server-side validation prevents invalid data from reaching the database

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Author

Arjun Sreedhar
GitHub