Cooking Assistant

A full‑stack recipe assistant that lets users browse recipes (via TheMealDB), save favorites, manage cooking timers, and use a voice assistant to read instructions hands‑free on the recipe detail page.

• Frontend: React + Vite with a voice assistant powered by Web Speech APIs
• Backend: Node.js + Express + MongoDB (Mongoose) with JWT auth

Features

• Search recipes and view rich details pulled from TheMealDB API
• Voice assistant on recipe detail page that can read: "Read All", and step-by-step commands (start/pause/continue/next/previous/repeat/stop)
• Favorites: toggle save/remove per user, persisted in MongoDB
• Timers: per-user cooking timers saved to the backend
• Auth: register/login with hashed passwords and JWTs

Tech Stack

• Frontend
  • React 19, Vite, React Router, React Icons
  • Custom hook useSpeechAssistant (Web Speech API: SpeechRecognition + SpeechSynthesis)
• Backend
  • Node.js, Express, MongoDB (Mongoose)
  • JWT authentication, bcryptjs for hashing, CORS, dotenv
• Dev Tooling
  • concurrently (start frontend + backend with one command)

Project Structure

backend/
  app.js
  bin/www                # server bootstrap
  config/db.js           # Mongo connection
  controllers/           # auth, users
  middleware/            # auth middleware
  models/                # user, recipe models
  routes/                # /api/auth, /api/users
frontend/
  src/
    pages/               # Home, RecipeDetail, Login, Signup, etc.
    components/          # UI components (Navbar, RecipeCard, Timer, etc.)
    hooks/useSpeechAssistant.js
    services/apiService.js
  vite.config.js

Getting Started

Prerequisites

• Node.js 18+ recommended
• MongoDB Atlas account (or a local MongoDB instance)

Environment Variables

Create a .env file in backend/ with:

MONGODB_URI=<your mongodb connection string>
JWT_SECRET=<any-strong-secret>
PORT=3000

Notes:

• Frontend calls the backend at http://127.0.0.1:3000/api by default (see frontend/src/services/apiService.js). Update either the .env PORT or the frontend baseURL if you change ports.

Run (single command)

From the project root:

npm run dev

This starts:

• Backend on http://127.0.0.1:3000
• Frontend (Vite) on http://127.0.0.1:5173

Run (separately)

In two terminals:

# Terminal 1 (backend)
cd backend
npm start

# Terminal 2 (frontend)
cd frontend
npm run dev

API Reference

Base URL: http://127.0.0.1:3000/api

Auth is Bearer JWT except for register/login. Include header:

Authorization: Bearer <token>
``