Lab Inventory System

This application was designed to be an Inventory System for the Lab in Rice 120 at the University of Virginia. Each piece of hardware is labeled with a unique barcode and students can scan the barcode and enter their email to checkout or return an item. An admin can also add new items and see what is checked out. This application was written in JavaScript using NodeJS with express for the back-end and ReactJS + redux for the front-end. The data is stored in a PostgresSQL database. It was originally designed to be installed on a RaspberryPi which lives in the lab.

Getting Started

These instructions will get you a copy of the project up and running on your local machine for development and testing purposes. See deployment for notes on how to deploy the project on a live system.

Prerequisites

Make sure your development system has PostgresSQL installed. You can find instructions for your specific system on the PostgresSQL website. NodeJs and npm also need to be installed.
First initialize the database by creating an items table and a users table.

CREATE TABLE "public"."items" (
    "id" serial,
    "item_id" text,
    "out_on" text,
    "out_to" text,
    PRIMARY KEY ("id"),
    UNIQUE ("item_id")
) TABLESPACE "pg_default";

CREATE TABLE "public"."users" (
    "id" serial,
    "user" text,
    "pass" text,
    PRIMARY KEY ("id")
) TABLESPACE "pg_default";

Then add a user

INSERT INTO "public"."users"("user", "pass") VALUES('[email protected]', 'secret') RETURNING "id", "user", "pass";

Installing

First clone this repository

git clone https://github.com/davjr96/LabCart.git

then install necessary packages

cd LabCart
npm install
cd front-end
npm install

Update config/db.js to reflect the PostgresSQL user you created when installing the database (NOT the user in the users table, but the actual DB user)

In one terminal tab run:

node server.js

In another run

cd front-end
npm Started

Go to localhost:8080 in a web browser and you should be greeted by a functioning system.

Deployment

This are instructions for installing on a fresh RaspberryPi 3 in production.

PostgresSQL Install

First install PostgresSQL:

sudo apt-get install postgresql-9.6

Then create the postgres user

sudo -u postgres psql
\password postgres
\q

Also install pgAdmin

sudo apt-get install pgadmin3

Create the tables:

CREATE TABLE "public"."items" (
    "id" serial,
    "item_id" text,
    "out_on" text,
    "out_to" text,
    PRIMARY KEY ("id"),
    UNIQUE ("item_id")
) TABLESPACE "pg_default";

CREATE TABLE "public"."users" (
    "id" serial,
    "user" text,
    "pass" text,
    PRIMARY KEY ("id")
) TABLESPACE "pg_default";

Then add an admin user for the web interface

INSERT INTO "public"."users"("user", "pass") VALUES('[email protected]', 'secret') RETURNING "id", "user", "pass";

Server Setup

First install node and npm

curl -sL https://deb.nodesource.com/setup_8.x | sudo -E bash -
sudo apt-get install nodejs

Clone this repository

git clone https://github.com/davjr96/LabCart.git

then install necessary packages

cd LabCart
npm install
cd front-end
npm install

Update config/db.js to reflect the PostgresSQL user you created when installing the database (NOT the user in the users table, but the actual DB user)

Install pm2

sudo npm install -g pm2

Start server.js with pm2

pm2 start server.js
pm2 startup

After running the command pm2 enable it will output a command, run that so that pm2 will start on boot.

Build the front-end

cd front-end
npm run build

Nginx Setup

We will use nginx to host the front-end and proxy the back-end API. First install nginx

sudo apt-get install nginx

Then replace the configuration:

sudo nano /etc/nginx/sites-available/default

with the following

server {
        listen 80 default_server;
        listen [::]:80 default_server;

        root /home/pi/LabCart/front-end/dist;

        index index.html index.htm

        server_name _;

        error_page 404 =200 /index.html;

        location /api {
                proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr;
                proxy_set_header Host $http_host;
                proxy_pass http://127.0.0.1:3000;
        }

}

Then start nginx

sudo /etc/init.d/nginx start