Finstagram - The Instagram Clone

✨ A MERN Stack Clone of the social networking giant - Instagram

Setting Up

A. Clone and install packages

1. Fork this project from the top right of the screen to create a copy of the code.

2. Download your fork of the project locally on your machine or clone it using

    git clone git@github.com:<your-username>/MERN-Instagram-Clone.git
   

3. Navigate to the folder and run npm i for installing all packages & dependencies for the server/backend via npm.

4. Navigate to the client and run yarn to install all dependencies & packages required for the frontend via yarn.

B. Create API secrets for external services

1. This project uses external services and APIs which require a secret/API pass-key for operations. Please ensure you obtain a pass-key from all these sources before running the project locally.
   • Cloudinary : For storing & fetching images.
   • SendGrid : For sending emails to users upon signup.
   • MapBox : For geo-encoding locations on posts.
   • MongoDB : Either a cloud hosted cluster on Mongo Atlas or your local mongo URL.

C. Create a .env file for serving secrets

1. On the root of your project create a new file named config.env or run

   touch config.env

2. Add the following content to the file

   NODE_ENV=development
   
   APP_NAME=My-Insta-Clone
   
   MONGO_SRV=<MONGO_CLUSTER_SECRET> || mongodb://localhost:27017/insta-clone
   
   JWT_SECRET=<24_BIT_RANDOM_STRING_FOR_ENCODING_JWT>
   JWT_EXPIRE=90d
   
   CLOUDINARY_URL=<UNIQUE_CLOUDINARY_URL>
   
   COOKIE_EXPIRE=60
   
   SENDGRID_API_KEY=<UNIQUE_SENDGRID_API_KEY>
   SENDGRID_SENDER_EMAIL=<EMAIL_ID_FOR_SENDING_WELCOME_EMAILS>
   

Important: A trial version of the Mapbox Access Token, which is provided while following the Mapbox tutorials, has been hardcoded here. You can change it with a personal token if you want, as the trial token may effect the number of requests you can make to the Mapbox API.

D. Run the project locally

1. Start the express server (via nodemon) for the backend. By default, it starts on port: 3001

   npm run dev
   

2. Navigate to the client to start the webpack dev server. By default, it starts on port: 3000.

   cd client/
   yarn start
   

Important: The front-end has an already configured proxy to port: 3001 to avoid the browser's CORS denial. If you are changing the port for the express server / backend. Please ensure to make a change here as well.

If you face any trouble setting up the project locally please feel free to open an issue here.

E. Backend API Testing

More than 35 test cases have been written to test the backend REST API routes using Jest & Supertest

Jest Coverage:

Running the test suites:

npm test

Running Jest with the --watch mode:

npm run test-dev

F. Further Information

1. View the project report & engineering choices made here.
2. View the API Docs built using Postman documentation here.