CS3219 Project (PeerPrep) - AY2425S1

Group: G25

Overview

This project follows a microservices architecture with the following services:

1. Frontend - Port 3000
2. User Service - Port 3001
3. Question Service - Port 3002
4. Matching Service - Port 3003
5. Collaboration Service - Port 3004
6. MongoDB - Port 27017 (Database)
7. Nginx API Gateway - Port 80
8. Redis - Port 6379
9. Zookeeper - Port 2181
10. Kafka - Port 9092, Port 29092
11. Chat Service (Located in addon/chat)

Setting up the Project

Running the Project with start.sh

A start.sh script is provided in the root directory to simplify setup. This script will start all services, check for any .env.example files, and create the required .env files if they don’t already exist.

To run the project, open a terminal in the cs3219-ay2425s1-project-g25 directory and execute:

./start.sh

This script can be run on Linux, macOS, and Windows (with Git Bash or WSL). It will initialize all services and ensure the environment files are set up as needed.

Ensure the script has execute permissions. If needed, set them by running:

chmod +x start.sh

This will initialize all services and ensure the environment files are set up as needed. Note that running start.sh requires Git Bash, WSL, or a similar terminal environment capable of executing Bash scripts.

Manual Setup

Copy and paste the .env.example files in each service. Rename them as .env files. Files to do this in:

1. ./
2. /frontend
3. /backend/user-service
4. /backend/question-service
5. /backend/matching-service
6. /backend/collaboration-service

Then, run node -e "console.log(require('crypto').randomBytes(32).toString('hex'))" twice to generate your 2 JWT token secrets. For the first one, paste it into the JWT_ACCESS_TOKEN_SECRET variable of the .env files in question-service and user-service. Then, copy the second into the JWT_REFRESH_TOKEN_SECRET of the .env file in user-service.

Further note: The DB_CLOUD_URI .env variable in user-service doesn't need to be filled in. A local database will be created in the mongoDB service.

Consult the readme files in each service if there are further configurations needed.

Running the Project

To run the main services, execute the following command in the root directory:

docker-compose up --build

To run the chat service, navigate to the addon/chat directory and run:

docker-compose up --build

Once the containers are up:

• Frontend: http://localhost:3000
• User Service: http://localhost:3001
• Question Service: http://localhost:3002
• Matching Service: http://localhost:3003
• Collaboration Service: http://localhost:3004
• MongoDB: http://localhost:27017
• Nginx API Gateway: http://localhost:80
• Redis: http://localhost:6379
• Zookeeper: http://localhost:2181
• Kafka: http://localhost:9092
• Chat Service: Available through the main application

Note that even after docker says that everything is up and running, there is a risk that they aren't when you load the frontend. Wait for the frontend logs to show up in the docker logs. In this event, wait for about a minute before trying again. If that still doesn't work and there are network errors, try rebuilding the services by running docker-compose up --build again.

MongoDB Configuration

• MongoDB runs on port 27017 inside a container named peerprep-mongo-container.
• It is initialized with:
  • Username: admin
  • Password: password
• Data is persisted in the ./data/db directory, and the init-mongo.js script initializes the database on startup.

Nginx API Gateway

• Nginx runs on port 80 and acts as the API gateway for routing requests to the respective services.

Kubernetes Auto Pod Scaling

All files for Kubernetes deployment and auto scaling of services can be found in the /kubernetes/ folder.

Refer to the README in the kubernetes folder for more information.