Welcome to Connectly! 💬
Connectly is a lightweight, server-side rendered chat repository designed as a hands-on learning project to master full-stack web development and database management. It functions as a complete CRUD (Create, Read, Update, Delete) application, demonstrating how a web server communicates with a database to persist data.
Key Features & Learning Focus:
- Complete CRUD Operations: Learn how to create, retrieve, edit, and delete chat records stored in a database.
- RESTful Routing: The backend server in
index.js is structured around REST principles, mapping HTTP methods (GET, POST, PUT, DELETE) to database actions.
- Database Schema & Validation: Mongoose models in
models/chat.js demonstrate how to structure documents, specify types, and enforce validation constraints (such as required fields and maximum lengths).
- Data Seeding: An initialization script
init.js populates MongoDB with sample records to demonstrate database staging.
- Server-Side Templating: Dynamic views are rendered on the fly using EJS (Embedded JavaScript) templates combined with raw CSS styling.
Connectly serves as a clean, practical reference for setting up backend architectures, routing requests, and managing database connections.