American SPCC Learning Management System

Learning Management System (LMS) monorepo for The American Society for the Positive Care of Children (American SPCC), a national nonprofit supporting parents, caregivers, and educators through evidence-based resources and interactive learning.

IMPORTANT!! Make sure you run git pull + npx prisma db push often! Also, remember to make a new branch everytime you execute a task. The branch name should be similar to the task name. After you have pushed your changes, make a PR so I (Sophie) can review it.

1. Install dependencies

npm install

Run this in both the frontend and backend folders.

2. Run the development servers

Backend (Express + Prisma + PostgreSQL)

cd backend
npm run dev

The backend will run on http://localhost:8000.

Frontend (React + Vite)

cd frontend
npm run dev

The frontend will run on http://localhost:5173.

3. Set up Local Supabase (PostgreSQL)

The project uses Supabase for PostgreSQL and Prisma ORM. To work locally, you'll use a Dockerized Supabase instance.

Install the Supabase CLI

macOS (Homebrew):

brew install supabase/tap/supabase

Other platforms: See the full installation guide

Initialize and Start Supabase Locally

Docker Desktop must be installed and running (download here: https://www.docker.com/products/docker-desktop/)

From the project backend (where the supabase folder will live):

npx supabase start

This launches local containers for:

• PostgreSQL (port 54322)
• Supabase API (port 54321)
• Supabase Studio (port 54323)

After it starts, you'll see a database URL like:

postgres://postgres:postgres@localhost:54322/postgres

Copy that URL for the next step.

4. Configure environment variables

Create a .env file in the /backend directory:

DATABASE_URL="postgresql://postgres:postgres@localhost:54322/postgres"
DIRECT_URL="postgresql://postgres:postgres@localhost:54322/postgres"

5. Initialize the database schema

Push your Prisma schema to the local Supabase PostgreSQL database:

cd backend
npx prisma db push

Then generate the Prisma client:

npx prisma generate

You can verify tables in Supabase Studio at http://localhost:54323

When you're done developing, stop the containers to free ports and memory:

npx supabase stop

6. Run prettier

Before each commit, run prettier to fix formatting:

npm run format