CampusConnect — Vercel Edition

AI-powered campus utilities: Lost & Found matching + Notes sharing. Fully serverless — React frontend + Vercel Serverless Functions + Firebase + Gemini AI.

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Stack

Layer	Technology
Frontend	React 18 + Vite + Tailwind CSS
Auth	Firebase Auth (Google Sign-In)
Database	Firebase Firestore
AI	Gemini 2.0 Flash (via REST API)
Backend	Vercel Serverless Functions (Node.js 20)
Hosting	Vercel

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Deploy to Vercel

1. Push to GitHub

git init
git add .
git commit -m "campusconnect vercel edition"
git remote add origin https://github.com/YOUR_USERNAME/campusconnect.git
git push -u origin main

2. Import on Vercel

1. Go to vercel.com → New Project → Import from GitHub
2. Select your repo
3. Leave all settings as default (Vercel auto-detects Vite)
4. Click Deploy — it will fail on first deploy because env vars aren't set yet, that's fine

3. Set Environment Variables

Go to your project on Vercel → Settings → Environment Variables, add:

Variable	Value
GEMINI_API_KEY	Your key from aistudio.google.com/app/apikey
FIREBASE_SERVICE_ACCOUNT	The full service account JSON as a single-line string

How to get FIREBASE_SERVICE_ACCOUNT:

1. Firebase Console → Project Settings → Service Accounts → Generate new private key
2. Download the JSON file
3. Open it in a text editor, select all, copy — paste the entire JSON into the Vercel env var field
4. Vercel stores it as-is; the app handles parsing

⚠️ Never commit the service account JSON to git. .gitignore already excludes it.

4. Redeploy

Vercel → your project → Deployments → click the latest → Redeploy.

Or push any commit and it auto-redeploys.

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Local Development

npm install
npm install -g vercel

# Create .env.local
echo 'GEMINI_API_KEY=your_key_here' >> .env.local
echo 'FIREBASE_SERVICE_ACCOUNT={"type":"service_account",...paste full json...}' >> .env.local

# Run locally (emulates serverless functions)
vercel dev
# Opens on http://localhost:3000

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Firebase Setup Checklist

• Firestore Database enabled (test mode for dev)
• Authentication → Google Sign-In enabled
• localhost added to Authorized Domains in Firebase Auth
• Your Vercel deployment URL added to Authorized Domains after deploy

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Firestore Collections

Collection	Key Fields
lost_found	id, type, description, location, contact, category, status, created_at
notes	id, title, subject, uploader_name, raw_text, summary, tags, downloads, created_at

No composite indexes needed — filtering is done in application code.