🚂 Interrail Journey Tracker

A real-time web application for tracking and visualizing our European interrail adventure. Built with React + TypeScript frontend and Node.js + Express backend.

👫 About Us

We (Sara and Erasmus) are going interrailing 2025 and wanted to play around with different vibe coding tools for learning purposes, so created this not-too-useful app for our friends and families to follow our trip!

🚀 Quick development setup

1. Clone and install

   git clone <repository-url>
   cd vartarvipavag
   npm run install:all

2. Start development

   npm run dev

   Build

   npm run build

3. Open in browser

   • Frontend: http://localhost:3000
   • Backend: http://localhost:3001

Deployment

Configure NGINX and Homeassistant as described in ./config/README.md, and then download the pre-built docker image (or build it yourself) for the server:

docker pull ghcr.io/emanuelen5/vartarvipavag-server:main
docker run --rm -p 3001:3001 --volume $(pwd)/data:/data ghcr.io/emanuelen5/vartarvipavag-server:main

Then you need to also host the client / front-end somewhere (like through Github pages, as we do).

Note

You'll need to set the Github repository secret API_URL to the URL of your backend if you build yourself for Github pages.

🏗️ Architecture

Frontend (React + TypeScript)

• Interactive map with React-Leaflet
• Real-time position updates
• Journey statistics and visualization
• Responsive design for mobile

Backend (Node.js + Express)

• RESTful API with TypeScript
• SQLite database for position storage
• Security middleware (write access restricted to localhost)

🛠️ Tech Stack

• Frontend: React 18, TypeScript, React-Leaflet, Vite
• Backend: Node.js, Express, SQLite, TypeScript
• Map: OpenStreetMap tiles via Leaflet
• Deployment: Docker support included

📱 Features

• Real-time Map: Interactive visualization of the journey
• Position Classification: Night stops vs daily positions
• Journey Stats: Distance, duration, and position tracking
• Mobile-Friendly: Responsive design for on-the-go updates

🔐 Security

Read operations (map viewing) are public, write operations (adding positions) are restricted to localhost for Home Assistant integration.

📁 Project Structure

vartarvipavag/
├── client/          # React frontend
├── server/          # Express backend  
├── config/          # Nginx & deployment configs
└── *.md             # Documentation

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Happy travels! 🚂✨