The objective of this project is to develop a web app that allows students to plan meals, track groceries, and propose recipes.

The web app includes 5 key features:

• Feature 1: User account management
• Feature 2: Recipe management
• Feature 3: Weekly meal planner
• Feature 4: Calendar and dashboard enhancements
• Feature 5: Recipe import from URL (with AI-assisted parsing fallback)
  • AI Attribution: Feature 5 uses OpenAI-based extraction as an optional fallback when structured parsing is incomplete.

The web app was completed across 4 sprints:

• Sprint 1: Setup GitHub; prepare sprint plan and user stories; implement Feature 1
• Sprint 2: Setup continuous integration pipeline; create acceptance tests for Sprint 1 stories; implement Feature 2
• Sprint 3: Create unit tests for Feature 1 and Feature 2; implement Feature 3 and Feature 4
• Sprint 4: Expand unit/integration testing, static-analysis maintenance, final report/documentation, and project stabilization

• GitHub Projects board used for backlog/task management: GitHub Project #3
• Complete sprint plan: Sprint Planning Spreadsheet

• Frontend: React 19 + TypeScript
• Build Tool: Vite 6
• Styling: Tailwind CSS 4
• Testing: Vitest + React Testing Library + Playwright
• Routing: React Router DOM 7

• Node.js 18+
• npm

From the project root:

npm install

This installs dependencies for all workspaces (frontend, backend, shared).

Start both frontend and backend:

npm run dev

Or run individually:

npm run dev:frontend   # Frontend only (port 3000)
npm run dev:backend    # Backend only (port 4000)

• Frontend: http://localhost:3000
• Backend: http://localhost:4000

npm test                # Run frontend + backend unit/integration tests
npm run test:frontend   # Frontend tests only
npm run test:backend    # Backend tests only
npm run e2e             # Playwright end-to-end tests

Coverage (workspace-level):

npm run test:coverage -w frontend
npm run test:coverage -w backend

npm run build         # Build all workspaces
npm run build:frontend
npm run build:backend

npm run lint          # Lint frontend and backend

GitHub Actions workflow: .github/workflows/ci.yml

• Triggered on every push and pull request
• Uses ubuntu-latest with Node.js 20
• Pipeline steps:
  • npm ci
  • npm test
  • npx playwright install --with-deps
  • npm run e2e

frontend/
- src/
- tests/                    # Frontend test suite (Vitest + RTL)
- index.html
- vite.config.ts
- vitest.config.ts
- package.json

backend/
- src/                      # App, routes, controllers, services, models, utils
- tests/                    # Backend unit/integration tests
- vitest.config.ts
- package.json

Run all commands from the project root:

Coding standards are clearly defined and effectively communicated to the team through the Wiki.

For CookWise, we initially went with a full-stack approach using React and Next.js. After further reconsideration, we chose a more standard approach using ReactJS + ViteJS for the frontend and Node.js + Express.js for the backend, encapsulated as a monorepo. This stack was chosen to offer the best performance-to-simplicity ratio for our application.

Frontend dependencies:

• lucide-react, icon library
• shadcn/ui, UI component library
• TailwindCSS, inline styling
• Axios, frontend-to-backend REST communication
• Better Auth, client authentication

Backend:

• Express.js, performant and scalable HTTP server with a fast learning curve
• MongoDB, document-oriented model suited for flexible data structures throughout development

Core framework repositories: ReactJS | ViteJS | Node.js

The project uses a layered automated testing strategy across the frontend and backend:

• Frontend unit tests use Vitest with React Testing Library in a jsdom environment to validate component behavior, state changes, API payload construction, and error handling.
• Backend unit and service-level tests use Vitest in a Node environment. Logic that depends on MongoDB models is tested against mongodb-memory-server, an isolated in-memory database, instead of a shared external database.
• End-to-end tests use Playwright to validate critical user flows such as registration, login/logout, and profile/preferences behavior in a real browser environment.

A current run of npm test passes with 23 frontend tests and 63 backend tests.

The project uses GitHub Actions for continuous integration, configured in .github/workflows/ci.yml.

• Trigger policy: runs on every push to any branch and on every pull request
• Runner: ubuntu-latest
• Runtime: Node.js 20 with npm dependency caching enabled
• Environment: test environment variables are injected in the workflow, including fallback values for Better Auth and OAuth credentials when GitHub secrets are not defined

Pipeline steps:

1. Check out the repository
2. Install dependencies with npm ci
3. Run the workspace test suite with npm test
4. Install Playwright browsers with npx playwright install --with-deps
5. Run browser end-to-end tests with npm run e2e