🐱 The Rivalry 🐶

The Rivalry is a fun and lighthearted web app where users can vote for their favorite: cats or dogs.
It showcases basic full-stack functionality including API use, POST requests, a PostgreSQL database, and simple login authentication.

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🚀 Features

• Vote for your favorite pet (cat or dog)
• View vote results from all users
• Register and log in using Passport.js for local authentication
• Secure password storage with bcrypt
• Simple session handling with express-session
• Fetch random pet images via external APIs from That API Company
• Uses Axios for HTTP requests
• PostgreSQL database to manage users, pets, and votes
• Templated views using EJS

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🧰 Technologies Used

• Node.js + Express
• EJS (templating)
• PostgreSQL
• Passport.js (authentication)
• bcrypt (password hashing)
• express-session (login sessions)
• Axios (API requests)
• dotenv (environment configuration)

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⚙️ Getting Started

1. Clone the repository

git clone https://github.com/anastasia-lobareva/the-rivalry.git

2. Install dependencies

Make sure you're in the project root directory, then run:

npm install

3. Set up the database

You can either:

• Copy the queries from the queries.sql file and run them manually in pgAdmin 4,
  or
• Use the terminal command below to run the SQL file directly via the command line:

psql -U your_user_name -d your_database_name -f queries.sql

Make sure pgAdmin 4 or PostgreSQL is installed and running, and that psql is available in your terminal.

4. Configure environment variables

Create a .env file in the root directory and add the following variables:

SESSION_SECRET="your_secret_word"
PG_USER="your_postgres_username"
PG_HOST="localhost"
PG_DATABASE="your_database_name"
PG_PASSWORD="your_postgres_password"
PG_PORT="5432"

5. Start the server

Run the following command to start the server:

npm start

Then open your browser and visit:

http://localhost:3000

📌 Notes

• This project is for learning and demo purposes only.
• Votes are tied to user accounts — users must be logged in to vote.

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🙏 Acknowledgments

• Pet images are powered by That API Company.

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📄 License

This project is open-source and available under the MIT License.

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🤝 Contributions

Pull requests, suggestions, and improvements are welcome!
Feel free to fork this repo and use it in your own projects or portfolio.

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🐾 Let the ultimate battle begin!