🍽️ BiteCraft — Food Menu Management System

BiteCraft is a full-stack CRUD web application for managing a restaurant's food menu, built with the MERN stack (MongoDB, Express, React, Node.js). It supports role-based access — Admins can manage the menu, while Users can browse available food items.

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📖 Project Description

BiteCraft lets a restaurant (or canteen, cafe, etc.) maintain its food menu digitally. Admins can add, update, and remove food items, while regular users can view and search the menu. Authentication is handled via JWT, and access to menu-management actions is restricted based on the logged-in user's role.

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✨ Features

• User registration and login with secure password hashing (bcrypt)
• JWT-based authentication
• Role-based access control — Admin and User
• Admin: Create, update, and delete food items
• Admin & User: View the full food menu
• Protected API routes using middleware (auth, authorizeRoles)
• RESTful API built with Express + MongoDB Atlas
• Client-side rendering with React + Vite

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🛠️ Tech Stack

Frontend

• React.js (Vite)
• React Router
• Fetch API / Axios
• Plain CSS

Backend

• Node.js
• Express.js
• MongoDB Atlas + Mongoose
• JSON Web Tokens (JWT)
• bcrypt (password hashing)
• CORS, dotenv

Deployment

• Backend: Render
• Frontend: Vercel

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👥 Team Members

Role	Name	Roll No.
Team Lead	Akshita Saxena	0008
Member	Siya Bhardwaj	(roll no.)
Member	Jiya Kaushik	(roll no.)
Member	Molly Arora	0052

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🔌 API Endpoints

Auth

Method	Endpoint	Access	Description
POST	/api/auth/register	Public	Register a new user
POST	/api/auth/login	Public	Log in and receive a JWT

Food Items

Method	Endpoint	Access	Description
GET	/api/foods	Admin / User	Get all food items
GET	/api/foods/:id	Admin / User	Get a single food item by ID
POST	/api/foods	Admin only	Create a new food item
PUT	/api/foods/:id	Admin only	Update a food item
DELETE	/api/foods/:id	Admin only	Delete a food item

Misc

Method	Endpoint	Description
GET	/	API welcome message
GET	/api/health	Health check

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⚙️ Setup Instructions

1. Clone the repository

git clone https://github.com/akshitaasaxena/BiteCraft.git
cd BiteCraft

2. Backend setup

cd backend
npm install

Create a .env file inside backend/ (see Environment Variables below), then run:

npm start

The backend will run on http://localhost:3000 by default.

3. Frontend setup

cd frontend
npm install

Create a .env file inside frontend/ (see below), then run:

npm run dev

The frontend will run on http://localhost:5173 by default.

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🔑 Environment Variables

backend/.env

PORT=3000
MONGO_URI=your_mongodb_atlas_connection_string
JWT_SECRET=your_jwt_secret

frontend/.env

VITE_API_URL=http://localhost:3000/api

.env files are gitignored and should never be pushed. Use the committed .env.example files as a reference for what variables are needed.

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📸 Screenshots

(Add screenshots of the Login page, Menu page, and Admin Dashboard here once built)

Login	Menu	Admin Dashboard
(screenshot)	(screenshot)	(screenshot)

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🚀 Deployment Links

• Frontend (Vercel): (add link once deployed)
• Backend (Render): (add link once deployed)
• GitHub Repository: https://github.com/akshitaasaxena/BiteCraft

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🌿 Git Workflow

• main — protected, stable branch
• Feature branches: feature/auth, feature/food-crud, feature/frontend-pages, etc.
• All changes go through a Pull Request and are reviewed by the Team Lead before merging
• No direct pushes to main (except the initial project scaffold)