Foodly - Online Food Blog

A PHP MVC web application built for Web Technologies Project 07. Visitors browse restaurants and food items, members post reviews and food experiences, and admins manage all content.

Tech stack

• PHP 8 (no framework, hand-rolled MVC)
• MySQL 5.7+ / MariaDB
• Vanilla JavaScript (no jQuery, no build step)
• Single CSS file with a custom "warm food vibes" theme

Folder layout

MVC/
  index.php             front controller / router
  .htaccess             Apache URL rewrite
  config/               db.php, session.php, helpers.php
  models/               one PHP class per table
  controllers/
    auth/               register, login, logout
    profile/            show / update / change password
    home/               visitor home
    restaurants/        public browse + single page
    menu/               menu item detail
    admin/              admin CRUD + moderation
    foodexperience/     food experience posts
    api/                AJAX endpoints (return JSON)
  views/                PHP view templates
  public/
    css/style.css       theme
    js/                 main.js, search.js, reviews.js, foodexp.js, admin_inline.js
    uploads/menu/       menu item images
    uploads/profiles/   profile pictures
  database/
    schema.sql          shared schema (do not modify)
    seed.sql            sample data

Setup

Option A - Docker (easiest, recommended)

Make sure Docker Desktop is running, then:

docker compose up -d --build

Open http://localhost:8080/. That's it - MySQL is started, schema + seed are loaded automatically.

To stop:

docker compose down

To start fresh (wipes DB volume):

docker compose down -v && docker compose up -d --build

Option B - Local PHP + MySQL

1. Create the database

mysql -u root -p < MVC/database/schema.sql
mysql -u root -p < MVC/database/seed.sql

2. Configure DB credentials

Edit MVC/config/db.php if your local MySQL user/password is not root / empty (or export DB_HOST, DB_USER, DB_PASS env vars).

3. Run the app

PHP built-in server:

cd MVC
php -S localhost:8000

Open http://localhost:8000/.

Apache (XAMPP/MAMP): point DocumentRoot to the MVC/ folder so .htaccess is honored.

Default seeded accounts

Role	Email	Password
admin	admin@foodly.com	admin123
member	sara@foodly.com	member123
member	tariq@foodly.com	member123

Feature map (PDF tasks)

Task	Student ID	What it covers
1	23-52978-3	Auth, register, login, Remember Me, profile, visitor home, basic browse
2	23-52980-3	Admin dashboard, restaurant + menu CRUD with image upload
3	23-53027-3	AJAX search/filter, member reviews on food items (post / delete via AJAX)
4	24-56637-1	Food Experience posts + comments, admin moderation (remove members/reviews/posts/comments)

Security

• Passwords hashed with password_hash (bcrypt), verified with password_verify
• All DB queries use PDO prepared statements
• Output escaped via e() (htmlspecialchars)
• Image uploads validated server-side for MIME type and ≤2MB
• Session check on all auth-gated pages
• Admin gate on /admin/* routes
• Member-only gate on review posting and food experience creation