LoopImmo

LoopImmo is a React and TypeScript application that reimagines the property selling process. It focuses on community involvement, transparency and digital tools to reduce agency fees for sellers.

Installation

npm install

After installing dependencies, copy .env.example to .env and server/.env.example to server/.env. Fill in these files with your own credentials before running the application.

Development

Start the development server with hot reload:

npm run dev

The frontend expects the API to be available on the URL specified by VITE_API_URL (default http://localhost:3000). When working locally, start the Express backend in another terminal:

npm run server

Run this command from the project root so that the cross-env dependency can be resolved correctly.

Vite is configured to proxy /api requests to this server during development. The proxy target is read from the VITE_API_URL variable. After building, start the proxy server with:

npm start

The server.js script now serves the static files from dist and proxies /api requests to the backend specified by the BACKEND_URL environment variable. It listens on IPv6 to support Railway's private networking.

Build for production:

npm run build

Lint the project:

npm run lint

Mock data service

The project uses a small data service located in src/services/dataService.ts to provide application data. When the VITE_USE_MOCKS environment variable is set to true (the default), the service returns arrays from the mock files under src/data and src/mocks. Set VITE_USE_MOCKS=false to disable these mocks – the functions will then throw errors until real API calls are implemented. This design makes it easy to replace the mock logic with actual HTTP requests in the future.

License

This project is licensed under the MIT License.

Database Setup

SQL scripts to create a PostgreSQL schema and populate it with sample data are provided in the sql folder.

1. Create an empty PostgreSQL database (version 17 or above).
2. Execute schema.sql to create the tables

psql "$DATABASE_URL" -f sql/schema.sql

3. Load the demo data:

psql "$DATABASE_URL" -f sql/sample_data.sql

Replace $DATABASE_URL with your connection string. The scripts can be executed against any PostgreSQL instance, including cloud providers.

Backend server

A minimal Express server located in the server directory exposes REST endpoints backed by PostgreSQL. Ensure you have loaded the schema and sample data, then add your database connection string to server/.env:

DATABASE_URL=postgres://user:password@localhost:5432/loopimmo

Start the server with:

npm run server

The script runs ts-node and uses the server/tsconfig.json project via the TS_NODE_PROJECT environment variable, set using cross-env, so ensure you are running Node.js 18 or later.

The API listens on port 3000 by default and currently exposes /api/users and /api/properties routes.

If your DATABASE_URL uses sslmode=require with a self-signed certificate, set PG_REJECT_UNAUTHORIZED=false in server/.env during development to skip certificate verification so pg can connect without errors.

Email configuration

The SMTP credentials used to send confirmation emails are stored in server/.env on the backend server. Edit that file (or server/.env.example) to match your environment. If these variables are missing, the newsletter endpoint simply logs a warning and does not attempt to send email, which avoids a 500 error during local testing. If you set the variables to dummy values without a real SMTP server (for example SMTP_HOST=localhost), nodemailer will try to connect and the server may output an ECONNREFUSED 127.0.0.1:587 error. Either configure valid credentials or remove the SMTP entries from .env so emails are skipped during development.

This port 587 belongs to your email server, not the API. Even if VITE_API_URL points to http://localhost:3000, you still need a mail service listening on localhost:587. Without one, simply omit the SMTP_* variables so that email sending is skipped entirely.