Fause | The Cheese Database

A simple web app for managing a cheese collection. Add, view, and delete cheeses with name, origin, milk type, and description.

Tech Stack

• Backend: Node.js, Express 5, Mongoose, MongoDB
• Frontend: Vanilla HTML, CSS, JavaScript

Features

• Add cheeses via form (Archive and Add Cheese tabs)
• Import from URL — paste a link to scrape cheese info and pre-fill the form (uses Gemini for descriptions when GEMINI_API_KEY is set)
• View all cheeses in a card grid
• Delete cheeses with confirmation
• Dark theme UI

Setup

1. Clone the repo and install dependencies:

   npm install

2. Create a .env file:

   MONGODB_URI=mongodb+srv://...
   GEMINI_API_KEY=...   # Optional: enables LLM-generated descriptions when scraping (free key at aistudio.google.com/apikey)
   

3. Run the server:

   node server.js

4. Open http://localhost:3000

Scraper & LLM

When you paste a URL in Add Cheese → Import from URL and click Fetch, the app scrapes the page for cheese info. If GEMINI_API_KEY is set in .env, it uses Google Gemini to generate a coherent 3-sentence description (origin, flavour, texture). Otherwise it falls back to heuristic extraction. Get a free API key at Google AI Studio.

What's Next

• Deployment