Recipe Management Application

A full-stack web application for recipe discovery, meal planning, and nutrition tracking with AI-powered suggestions.

Features

• Recipe Management: Browse, search, and save recipes with detailed ingredients and instructions
• Meal Planning: Interactive calendar for weekly meal planning with drag-and-drop functionality
• AI-Powered Chat: Get personalized recipe recommendations using Mistral AI
• Nutrition Tracking: Monitor daily nutritional information and summaries
• Social Features: Follow users and view their profiles
• Grocery Lists: Auto-generate shopping lists from meal plans

Tech Stack

Backend

• ASP.NET Core 9.0 (MVC)
• Entity Framework Core with SQL Server
• ASP.NET Identity for authentication
• Redis for distributed caching
• Azure Blob Storage for file management
• Mistral AI via Semantic Kernel for chat and suggestions

Frontend

• Razor Views (CSHTML)
• JavaScript (ES6+)
• Bootstrap & custom CSS
• jQuery for DOM manipulation

Quick Start

# Clone the repository
git clone https://github.com/Lorieta/MVCPrject.git
cd MVCPrject

# Restore dependencies
dotnet restore

# Update database
cd MVCPrject
dotnet ef database update

# Run the application
dotnet run

Configuration

Create appsettings.json in /MVCPrject directory:

{
  "ConnectionStrings": {
    "RecipeDbConnection": "Server=your-server;Database=RecipeDB;User Id=your-user;Password=your-password;TrustServerCertificate=True;"
  },
  "Mistral": {
    "ApiKey": "your-mistral-api-key"
  },
  "AzureBlobStorage": {
    "ConnectionString": "your-azure-storage-connection-string"
  },
  "Redis": {
    "ConnectionString": "your-redis-connection-string",
    "InstanceName": "RecipeApp_"
  }
}

Project Structure

MVCPrject/
└── MVCPrject/
    ├── Controllers/        # Backend - MVC Controllers
    ├── Models/            # Backend - Data models
    ├── Data/              # Backend - Services & DB context
    ├── Views/             # Frontend - Razor templates
    └── wwwroot/           # Frontend - Static assets (CSS, JS, images)

Backend Architecture

graph TD
  subgraph Client["Client"]
    U["Web Client (Browser)"]
  end

  subgraph Backend["ASP.NET Core Backend"]
    C["Controllers (MVC)"]
    Auth["Identity + Cookie Auth"]
    S["Service Layer"]
    MemCache["UserCacheService (MemoryCache)"]
  end

  subgraph Data["Data Layer"]
    DB["Azure SQL Database"]
    Redis["Redis Distributed Cache"]
    Blob["Azure Blob Storage"]
  end

  subgraph AI["AI"]
    SK["Semantic Kernel"]
    M["Mistral AI API"]
  end

  subgraph DevOps["DevOps"]
    CI["Azure Pipelines (CI/CD)"]
  end

  U -->|HTTPS| C
  C --> Auth
  Auth --> DB

  C --> S
  S --> DB
  S --> Redis
  S --> Blob
  S --> MemCache

  S --> Recipes["RecipeManipulationService"]
  S --> Users["UserService"]
  S --> MealLogs["MealLogService"]
  S --> Suggestions["SuggestionService"]

  S --> SK
  SK --> M

  CI -.-> C

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