Nexora

Nexora is a real-time one-to-one chat application built on the MERN stack. It combines a JWT-authenticated Express/MongoDB backend with a Socket.IO messaging layer and a React (Vite) frontend, so messages are delivered instantly between connected users while conversation history is persisted for later retrieval.

Features

• User authentication — signup and login with hashed passwords (bcrypt) and JWT sessions stored in an httpOnly cookie
• Real-time messaging — instant message delivery via Socket.IO, with send/receive acknowledgements and error handling
• Online presence — live tracking of which users are currently online
• Conversations — conversations are created automatically between two participants and store their full message history
• Contacts — browse existing contacts and search users by name or email to start a new chat
• Protected routes — API endpoints guarded by JWT-based middleware
• Modern UI — React 19 + Vite frontend styled with Tailwind CSS and Radix/shadcn-based components

Tech Stack

Frontend

• React 19 + Vite
• Redux Toolkit (state management)
• React Router
• Tailwind CSS, Radix UI / shadcn components
• Socket.IO client, Axios

Backend

• Node.js + Express 5
• MongoDB with Mongoose
• Socket.IO
• JSON Web Tokens (JWT) + bcrypt for authentication

Project Structure

Nexora/
├── backend/
│   ├── config/          # Database connection setup
│   ├── controllers/     # Route handlers (auth, chat, messages, users)
│   ├── middleware/       # Auth middleware (protectRoute)
│   ├── models/          # Mongoose schemas (User, Conversation, Message, Contact)
│   ├── routes/           # Express route definitions
│   ├── utils/            # Helpers (JWT token generation)
│   ├── server.js         # App entry point + Socket.IO server
│   └── package.json
└── frontend/
    ├── src/
    │   ├── components/   # UI components (chat window, sidebar, message input, etc.)
    │   ├── pages/         # Landing, login, signup, and chat pages
    │   ├── store/         # Redux store
    │   ├── socket/        # Socket.IO client setup
    │   ├── lib/ & context/
    │   └── assets/
    ├── vite.config.js
    └── package.json

Getting Started

Prerequisites

• Node.js (v18 or later recommended)
• A MongoDB instance (local or MongoDB Atlas)

1. Clone the repository

git clone https://github.com/MuhammadZain111/Nexora.git
cd Nexora

2. Set up the backend

cd backend
npm install

Create a .env file in the backend directory with the following variables:

PORT=5000
MONGODB_URI=your_mongodb_connection_string
JWT_SECRET=your_jwt_secret
NODE_ENV=development

Start the backend server:

npm run dev

The API will be available at http://localhost:5000.

3. Set up the frontend

In a separate terminal:

cd frontend
npm install
npm run dev

The app will be available at http://localhost:5173.

API Overview

Method	Endpoint	Description
POST	/api/auth/signup	Register a new user
POST	/api/auth/login	Log in and receive a session cookie
POST	/api/auth/logout	Log out the current user
GET	/api/auth/check	Verify the current auth session
GET	/api/users/contacts	Get the logged-in user's contacts
POST	/api/users/search-contact	Search users by name or email
GET	/api/chat/conversations	Get all conversations for the user
GET	/api/chat/conversations/:id	Get a specific conversation
POST	/api/chat/conversations	Create a new conversation
DELETE	/api/chat/conversations/:id	Delete a conversation
GET	/api/messages/:id	Get messages for a conversation

Real-time events (Socket.IO):

Event	Direction	Description
send_message	client → server	Send a new message
receive_message	server → client	Deliver an incoming message
message_ack	server → client	Acknowledge a sent message
message_error	server → client	Report a failed message
online_users	server → client	Broadcast currently online user IDs

Contributing

Contributions are welcome. Please open an issue to discuss any significant changes before submitting a pull request.

License

This project is currently unlicensed. Add a LICENSE file to specify usage terms.