C³ Backend

Automated membership registration and data management system for the Cloud Community Club.

Problem Statement

Managing student club memberships manually often results in fragmented data, delayed communication, and administrative overhead. This project addresses these challenges by providing a centralized, automated backend system for handling member intake. It ensures data integrity through validation, prevents duplicate registrations, and delivers immediate confirmation to applicants, streamlining the administrative process for the club.

Key Features

• Membership API: Secure REST endpoint to capture and validate student details including Roll Number, Department, and Year.
• Data Integrity: Enforces unique constraints on email addresses to prevent duplicate registrations.
• Automated Notifications: Integrates with SMTP services to send formatted HTML welcome emails immediately upon successful registration.
• Reliability: Implements fallback SMTP connection strategies (TLS/SSL) to ensure email delivery resilience.
• Diagnostics: Includes dedicated endpoints for server health checks and SMTP configuration testing.

Tech Stack

• Runtime: Node.js
• Framework: Express.js
• Database: MongoDB (via Mongoose)
• Email Service: Nodemailer
• Utilities: Dotenv, CORS

Architecture

The application operates as a standard REST API.

1. Request Handling: The Express server receives a POST request at /api/register.
2. Validation: Input data is validated for completeness.
3. Verification: The system queries MongoDB to ensure the user is not already registered.
4. Persistence: Validated data is stored in the newmembers collection.
5. Notification: An asynchronous process triggers Nodemailer to send a welcome email using configured SMTP credentials.
6. Response: A JSON response indicates success or failure to the client.

Local Development

Prerequisites

• Node.js (v14 or higher)
• A MongoDB connection string (Local or Atlas)
• SMTP credentials (e.g., Gmail App Password)

Setup

1. Clone the repository:

   git clone <repository-url>
   cd c3_backend

2. Install dependencies:

   npm install

3. Configure environment variables: Create a .env file in the root directory with the following keys:

   PORT=5000
   MONGO_URI=<your_mongodb_connection_string>
   EMAIL_USER=<your_email_address>
   EMAIL_PASS=<your_email_password>
   SMTP_HOST=smtp.gmail.com
   SMTP_PORT=587
   

4. Start the server:

   npm start

Deployment

The application is designed to be deployed on any Node.js-compatible hosting environment. Ensure that all environment variables defined in the Setup section are correctly configured in the production environment.

Limitations and Status

• Administrative Interface: There is currently no UI or API for administrators to view or manage registered members; database access is required.
• Legacy Code: The repository contains unused models (registration.js) and dependencies (pdf-lib) related to a dormant event ticketing feature. These are retained for potential future use.
• CORS Configuration: Cross-Origin Resource Sharing (CORS) origins are currently hardcoded in the server configuration.

Contributors

Maintained by the Cloud Community Club technical team.