🏨 HostelBuddy

A Peer-to-Peer Sharing Platform for the Campus Community

HostelBuddy is a full-stack web application designed to foster a vibrant sharing economy within college and university hostels. 🎓
It empowers students to lend, borrow, and request items directly from their peers — promoting sustainability, affordability, and stronger community bonds without relying on traditional e-commerce platforms. 🌱

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✨ Key Features

• 🔐 Secure Authentication – Login & Signup via Google OAuth
• 👤 User Profiles – Manage name, contact details, batch year & hostel info
• 📦 Item Lending – List items with title, description & images
• 🔍 Item Borrowing – Browse/search items & request them for a set duration
• 📥 Request Management – Owners can accept or decline borrowing requests
• 📢 Community Requests – Post what you need & let others respond
• 🔔 Real-time Notifications – Alerts for accepted/declined requests

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🛠 Tech Stack

🎨 Frontend

• ⚛️ React.js – UI library
• 🌐 React Router – Client-side routing
• 🎨 Tailwind CSS – Utility-first styling
• 🧩 Material-Tailwind – Material UI components with Tailwind
• 🔐 Google OAuth – Authentication

⚙️ Backend

• 🟢 Node.js + Express.js – Backend framework
• 🍃 MongoDB + Mongoose – NoSQL database & data modeling
• 🔑 JWT (JSON Web Tokens) – Auth & authorization
• ☁️ Cloudinary – Image hosting & management
• 📤 Multer – File uploads

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🚀 Installation & Setup

📌 Prerequisites

• Node.js (v14 or higher)
• npm (comes with Node.js)
• MongoDB (local or Atlas cloud instance)

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🔧 Backend Setup

# Clone the repository  
git clone https://github.com/codeCraft-Ritik/HostelBuddy.git  
cd HostelBuddy  

# Install backend dependencies  
npm install