TigerLift - Fall 2024 COS 333 Project

Originally created by Julia Ying, Grace Kim, Ritika Bhatnagar, Aasha Jain

Setting up

Ask your team lead for shared API keys and any email credentials you do not generate yourself.

1. Download PostgreSQL

You need Postgres for DATABASE_URL. Install, start it, then create the database:

brew install postgresql@16
brew services start postgresql@16
export PATH="/opt/homebrew/opt/postgresql@16/bin:$PATH"
createdb tigerlift

Add the export PATH=... line to ~/.zshrc so createdb / psql work in new terminals. If createdb says the database already exists, you are set.

Then ask your copilot (Cursor, Copilot, or any AI coding assistant) for your Postgres database URL so you can put it in .env. It should look like:

DATABASE_URL=postgresql://YOUR_MAC_USERNAME@localhost:5432/tigerlift

Use your Mac username (whoami) in place of YOUR_MAC_USERNAME.

2. Generate a secret app key

python3 -c "import secrets; print(secrets.token_hex(32))"

3. Create .env in the project root (TigerLift/.env)

APP_SECRET_KEY=
DATABASE_URL=postgresql://YOUR_MAC_USERNAME@localhost:5432/tigerlift
EMAIL_ADDRESS=
EMAIL_PASSWORD=
EMAILS_ON=False
FLASK_ENV=development

Paste the secret from step 2 into APP_SECRET_KEY and the Postgres URL from step 1 into DATABASE_URL. Leave email blank and EMAILS_ON=False unless your team lead gives you credentials.

4. Frontend .env (optional for now)

Skip this for now. The servers can start without a Google API key; address autocomplete will not work until you add frontend/.env with VITE_GOOGLE_API_KEY= from your team lead.

5. Start the servers

Once Postgres and the root .env are ready, ask your copilot to start the localhost servers, or run them yourself:

cd backend
python3 -m venv .venv
source .venv/bin/activate
pip install -r requirements.txt
python app.py

cd frontend
npm install
npm run dev

If psycopg2 fails to install, run source ~/.zshrc and try pip install again. The app is at http://localhost:5173/. The backend uses http://localhost:5001/ because macOS AirPlay often takes port 5000. Princeton CAS login is still required to use the app.

Deploying

• cd frontend and run npm run build. This will create a dist folder in frontend.
• Commit that new dist folder.
• Navigate to https://lift.tigerapps.org/.