commercial-home-rent

Property listing and rental platform powered by Express.js, MongoDB, EJS, Passport, and Cloudinary.

Modern, compact README tailored to the Express + EJS property-listing code in this repository. Items marked [VERIFY] come from the source and should be confirmed before production use.

Table of Contents

• Project intro
• Project structure
• Differentiators
• Features
• Tech stack
• Install methods
  • npm / Node
  • Docker
• Format selection & upload syntax
• Database structure
• Contributing
• License

🚀 Project intro

commercial-home-rent is a compact Express application that implements listings, reviews, and user authentication. It is intended as a learning or MVP foundation for property listing and renting functionality. The application uses server-side templates (EJS) and stores data in MongoDB.

📁 Project structure

wanderlust-ecommerce-app/
├── models/            # Mongoose models
├── routes/            # Express route handlers
├── views/             # EJS templates
├── public/            # Static assets (CSS, JS, images)
├── controllers/       # Controller logic
├── app.js             # Main application entry point
├── .env               # Environment variables
├── README.md
└── ...

Key routes (based on app.js):

• / — user routes (signup/login) handled by routes/user.js
• /listings — listing routes handled by routes/listing.js
• /listings/:id/reviews — reviews handled by routes/review.js

⭐ Differentiators

• Clear MVC-like separation (models/controllers/routes) in a small codebase.
• passport-local-mongoose simplifies user model and authentication.
• Joi validation in schema.js provides central request validation.
• Cloudinary integration for image storage (optional).

🔧 Features

Core features

Feature	Status	Notes
User registration & login	Current	Passport Local (session-based auth)
Listings CRUD	Current	Create, read, update, delete listings
Listing update ownership guard	Current	Update only if: listing exists, user authenticated, user is owner
Reviews (create/delete)	Current	Authenticated users can add/remove their reviews
Session storage (MongoDB)	Current	connect-mongo
Flash messages & error handling	Current	Centralized Express error middleware
Cloud image uploads	Current	Multer + Cloudinary (optional)

Extended / Optional

Feature	Status	Notes
Docker support	Example	Sample Dockerfile included
Payments	Future	Stripe / PayPal integration planned
Favorites / Wishlists	Future	User personalization
Reviews & Ratings enhancements	Future	Owner / renter feedback workflow

Listing update authorization

Update (PUT/PATCH) is permitted only if all conditions hold:

1. Listing exists (404 if not).
2. User is logged in (redirect/login if not).
3. Authenticated user _id matches listing owner (403 otherwise).

User review option

• Authenticated users can post one review per listing (enforce uniqueness in controller/model if desired).
• Conditions:
  1. Listing exists.
  2. User authenticated.
  3. (Optional) Prevent user from reviewing own listing.
• Delete review allowed only for its author (and optionally admins).

🧰 Tech stack

• Node.js (see package.json. engines field contains Node 23.5.0 — prefer an LTS version in production) [VERIFY]
• Express
• EJS + ejs-mate
• MongoDB + Mongoose
• Passport.js + passport-local-mongoose
• Joi for validation
• Cloudinary + multer-storage-cloudinary for image uploads

⚙️ Install methods

This is a Node.js application. Pip/pipx are not applicable.

📦 npm / Node

Install via npm install and start with node app.js. Note: package.json contains other scripts (Vite) but the server runs from app.js.

git clone <repo-url> commercial-home-rent
cd commercial-home-rent
npm install
node app.js
# for development with auto-reload
nodemon app.js

🐳 Docker

Example Dockerfile:

FROM node:20-alpine
WORKDIR /app
COPY package*.json ./
RUN npm ci --production
COPY . .
ENV NODE_ENV=production
EXPOSE 8080
CMD ["node", "app.js"]

Build and run:

docker build -t commercial-home-rent:latest .
docker run -p 8080:8080 -e ATLASDB_URL="..." -e SECRET="..." commercial-home-rent:latest

Create a .env at the project root with these variables (example):

ATLASDB_URL=mongodb+srv://<user>:<pass>@cluster.example.mongodb.net/dbname
SECRET=some-session-secret
CLOUD_NAME=...
CLOUD_API_KEY=...
CLOUD_API_SECRET=...
MAP_TOKEN=... # optional

Note: app.js loads .env automatically when NODE_ENV != "production".

🗂 Format selection & upload syntax

• schema.js defines the expected request payload shapes for listings and reviews.
• cloudConfig.js contains Cloudinary params; the source includes a probable typo allowerdFormats — correct to allowedFormats if you depend on that option. [VERIFY]

Listing Joi validation fields:

• listing.title (string, required)
• listing.description (string, required)
• listing.location (string, required)
• listing.country (string, required)
• listing.price (number >= 0, required)
• listing.image (string | null)

Review fields:

• review.rating (number 1..5)
• review.comment (string)

Mermaid flow (updated: default image used when none uploaded):

flowchart TD
    A[Client] --> B[Login or Signup]
    B --> C[Auth OK]
    C --> D[POST /listings]
    D --> E[Parse body]
    E --> F[Validate Joi]
    F --> I{Image provided?}
    I -->|Yes| J[Upload image]
    J --> K[Attach uploaded image refs]
    I -->|No| L[Use default image placeholder]
    K --> M[Listing created]
    L --> M
    M --> N[PUT /listings/:id]
    N --> O[Check: exists?]
    O --> P{Owner & Auth?}
    P -->|No| Q[Reject 403 / redirect]
    P -->|Yes| R[Apply updates]
    R --> S[Save changes]
    M --> T[POST /listings/:id/reviews]
    T --> U[Check: auth + not owner]
    U --> V[Validate review]
    V --> W[Save review]
    W --> X[Respond]
    S --> X[Respond]

Loading

🗄️Database structure

MongoDB collections and representative document shapes.

users collection

{
  "_id": "ObjectId",
  "username": "string",
  "email": "string",
  "hash": "string",       // managed by passport-local-mongoose
  "salt": "string",       // managed internally
  "createdAt": "Date",
  "updatedAt": "Date"
}

listings collection

{
  "_id": "ObjectId",
  "title": "string",
  "description": "string",
  "location": "string",
  "country": "string",
  "price": 3500,
  "image": {
    "url": "string",              // uploaded or default placeholder
    "filename": "string"          // Cloudinary public_id (optional)
  },
  "owner": "ObjectId -> users._id",
  "reviews": ["ObjectId -> reviews._id"],
  "createdAt": "Date",
  "updatedAt": "Date"
}

reviews collection

{
  "_id": "ObjectId",
  "rating": 1,
  "comment": "string",
  "author": "ObjectId -> users._id",
  "listing": "ObjectId -> listings._id",
  "createdAt": "Date",
  "updatedAt": "Date"
}

Relationships

• listing.owner references users.
• listing.reviews is an array of review ids.
• review.author references users.
• review.listing references listings.
• Delete listing: cascade (manually) delete its reviews.
• Delete user: decide whether to restrict if user owns listings/reviews (not automatic).

Index suggestions

• users: { username: 1 } unique.
• listings: { owner: 1, createdAt: -1 }.
• reviews: { listing: 1, author: 1 } unique compound (enforces one review per user per listing).

Default image logic

If no upload provided, set image.url to a constant (e.g. /images/default-listing.jpg) and image.filename to null.

🤝 Contributing

• Fork the repo, create a branch, open a PR.
• Keep PRs small and include verification steps.
• Never commit secrets; use .env for local configuration.

📜 License

MIT — add a LICENSE file to make this explicit.