CSC437 — Artisan Pottery Shop

A full-stack e-commerce web application for browsing and purchasing artisan pottery. Built with Lit web components on the frontend, Express + MongoDB on the backend, and TypeScript throughout.

Project Structure

This is an npm workspace monorepo with three packages:

packages/
├── app/      # Frontend — Lit web components + Vite
├── server/   # Backend — Express API + MongoDB
└── proto/    # Static HTML/CSS prototype

Tech Stack

• Frontend: TypeScript, Lit, Vite, @calpoly/mustang (routing & state)
• Backend: Node.js, Express, TypeScript, MongoDB (Mongoose), JWT, bcryptjs
• Tooling: npm workspaces, nodemon, esbuild-node-tsc

Features

• User registration and login (JWT authentication)
• Browse pottery product catalog
• View individual item details
• Shopping cart management
• User profiles

Setup

Prerequisites

• Node.js
• A running MongoDB instance
• A .env file in packages/server/ with:

TOKEN_SECRET=your_jwt_secret
PORT=3000
MONGO_CONNECTION=your_mongodb_connection_string

Install dependencies

npm install

Build & Run

# 1. Build the frontend
cd packages/app
npm run build

# 2. Start the server (serves the built frontend)
cd ../server
npm run start:app

Account & Authentication

Create an account on the signup page before accessing protected routes. All user data (cart, profile) is tied to your account.