Remote Intern Management (RIM)

A MERN app to manage interns, tasks, attendance, and evaluations. Backend: Node.js, Express, Mongoose, JWT, PM2 Frontend: React (create-react-app), React Router, Axios DB: MongoDB (Atlas or self-hosted) Prod Example: Nginx serves React and proxies /api → Node (port 5001) CI/CD

Quick Start

1. Clone & install :

   git clone https://github.com/Pragati-006/Remote-Intern-Management-.git

   cd Remote-Intern-Management-/backend

   install backend deps

   cd backend npm install

   install frontend deps

   cd ../frontend npm install

2. Environment variables

   Create backend/.env:

   MONGO_URI=mongodb+srv://:@/?retryWrites=true&w=majority

   JWT_SECRET=replace_with_a_long_random_string

   PORT=5001

   Frontend uses:

   Local dev (optional): create frontend/.env.development

   REACT_APP_API_URL=http://localhost:5001/api

   Production build: REACT_APP_API_URL=/api (set via CI or .env.production)

3. Run locally (two terminals)

Terminal A – backend

cd backend

npm start # runs server.js on http://localhost:5001

health check

curl -i http://localhost:5001/api/health

Terminal B – frontend

cd frontend

npm start # http://localhost:3000

In local dev, the frontend talks to http://localhost:5001/api.

NPM Scripts

Backend

npm start – start dev/prod (reads .env)

npm run prod – node server.js

npm test – run Mocha tests

Frontend

npm start – CRA dev server (http://localhost:3000)

npm run build – production build to frontend/build

Tests

cd backend

npm test

CI/CD with GitHub Actions

Required GitHub Secrets

EC2_HOST – your EC2 public IP

EC2_USER – usually ubuntu

EC2_SSH_KEY – private key contents for that EC2 user

Important:

Your EC2 instance must already have the repo cloned at ~/Remote-Intern-Management- and backend .env configured with real secrets.

Production Deployment (EC2 + Nginx + PM2)

1. On EC2, install prerequisites

Node & Git (example for Ubuntu)

curl -fsSL https://deb.nodesource.com/setup_18.x | sudo -E bash -

sudo apt-get install -y nodejs git

Nginx

sudo apt-get install -y nginx

PM2

sudo npm i -g pm2

2. Clone repo & configure backend

Start with PM2:

pm2 start server.js --name server

pm2 save

Verify:

curl -i http://127.0.0.1:5001/api/health

3. Build & place frontend

cd ~/Remote-Intern-Management-/frontend

npm ci

npm run build

sudo mkdir -p /var/www/rim-frontend

sudo cp -r build/* /var/www/rim-frontend/

4. Nginx config

Create /etc/nginx/sites-available/rim:

sudo nano /etc/nginx/sites-available/rim

Update code:

server { listen 80; server_name _; root /var/www/rim-frontend; index index.html; # Proxy API to Node on port 5001 location ^~ /api/ { proxy_pass http://127.0.0.1:5001/; # trailing slash IMPORTANT proxy_http_version 1.1; proxy_set_header Host $host; proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr; proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for; proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-Proto $scheme; proxy_set_header Connection ""; proxy_redirect off; } # SPA fallback for React location / { try_files $uri /index.html; } }

Enable & reload:

sudo ln -sf /etc/nginx/sites-available/rim /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/rim

sudo nginx -t && sudo systemctl reload nginx

5. Verify from your laptop

React app

http://<EC2_PUBLIC_IP>/

API health (goes through Nginx → Node)

curl -i http://<EC2_PUBLIC_IP>/api/health

Health Checks & Logs

Backend health

curl -i http://127.0.0.1:5001/api/health # on EC2

curl -i http://<EC2_PUBLIC_IP>/api/health # from your machine

PM2

pm2 status

pm2 logs server --lines 100

pm2 restart server

Nginx

sudo tail -n 100 /var/log/nginx/access.log

sudo tail -n 100 /var/log/nginx/error.log

License

MIT (or your preferred license)

Author

Pragati — PRs and issues welcome.